Signaling greater urgency in efforts to end extreme poverty, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim announced on Wednesday that the World Bank has set an interim target to reduce global poverty to nine percent in 2020.
"Setting this target reminds us we are on the cusp of something historic, ridding the world of the scourge of people living in such abysmal conditions," Kim said on the eve of the opening of the 2013 Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund.
World Bank economists say if developing countries continue their strong growth rates for the next seven years, the global poverty rate will dip below 10 percent for the first time since 1990, when the figures were first reported.
Since 1990, when 43 percent of people in developing countries lived in poverty, global poverty has been steadily declining. An estimated 1.9 billion people lived in poverty in 1990, while 20 years later, that number had fallen to 1.2 billion. Living in extreme poverty is defined as living on less than 1.25 U.S. dollars a day.
If the goal is achieved, the world will have 510 million fewer people living in poverty in 2020 than a decade earlier, but an estimated 690 million people would be still living in extreme poverty -- about half of the population of Africa.
However, Kim reiterated World Bank's ultimate goal of ending extreme poverty completely by 2030, encouraging "focus" on the issue.
"Ending extreme poverty is achievable in less than a generation's time," Kim said, adding, "we need strong growth, committed political leaders, and a growing social movement that keeps pushing all of us to focus like a laser beam on the result all of us want."
相关新闻：世界银行行长金墉9日提出在2020年将全球极端贫困率降至9%的中期目标，呼吁国际社会关注消除极端贫困的紧迫性。
在2013年国际货币基金组织和世界银行年会召开前夕，金墉表示，设置消除极端贫困中期目标，是提醒我们正处在消除极端贫困的关键历史时刻。他说，消除极端贫困可以在一代人的时间内完成，我们需要强有力的经济增长和有担当的政治领袖，要像“激光”一样专注于我们想要达成的结果。
世行经济学家的研究结果显示，如果发展中国家可以在未来7年延续当前的强劲增长，全球极端贫困率将在2020年降到10%，这也将是自1990年以来极端贫困率首次降至这一水平。根据世行的数据，1990年时，发展中国家有43%的人口处于极端贫困之中，此后极端贫困率逐年下降。2010年，极端贫困人口数量已从1990年的19亿人降至12亿人。
如果金墉提出的中期目标能够实现，到2020年世界极端贫困人口将比2010年减少5.1亿人。尽管如此，届时全球仍会有大约6.9亿极端贫困人口，约相当于非洲大陆人口总数的一半。
完成中期目标之后，世行还将致力于到2030年完全消除极端贫困。世行将极端贫困定义为每天生活费低于1.25美元。 (新华网)
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