Publications

	Table of Contents
p. 7 of 53 BACK | NEXT Executive Summary Summary of Conclusions and Recommendations by ADF Donors ADF VIII: Requests for Midterm Policy Reviews and Reports I. Introduction II. The International Development Goals III. Poverty in Developing Asia A. Poverty Reduction and Poor Countries in Asia B. The Asian Financial Crisis C. The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries IV. ADB and ADF: Vision and Role V. ADB’S Framework for Poverty Reduction VI. Development through Partnership VII. ADF Resources: Portfolio Management and Performance VIII. The Strategy for Implementing ADF VIII IX. Planned Lending in ADF VIII X. Financing Framework for ADF VIII XI. Issues for Policy Review XII. Midterm Review of ADF VIII

ADF VIII Donor's Report: Fighting Poverty in Asia : III. Poverty in Developing Asia

---

A. Poverty Reduction and Poor Countries in Asia

8. The Asian and Pacific Region contains close to 900 million poor people. This is by far the largest concentration of poor in the world. By comparison, sub-Saharan Africa, the region commonly perceived as the poorest, has about 250 million poor, while all other developing regions combined have around 200 million poor. Similarly, because of high population densities and high incidence of poverty in some parts as well as rapid economic growth in others, problems of environmental degradation and natural resource management are particularly severe in developing Asia.

9. Donors reaffirmed that poverty is widespread in ADF-borrowing DMCs (Table 2). Many people live below or near the poverty line, in both absolute numbers and the proportion of the total population. Thus, most ADF borrowers are afflicted with mass poverty. Given the current levels of development and limited resources of these borrowers, Donors emphasized that sustainable poverty reduction should be the long-term goal for the DMC governments, development agencies, and international community. Donors agreed that sustained progress on poverty reduction in developing Asia will go a long way toward combating global poverty. The rest of the world is not immune to the negative effects and benefits foregone as a result of continued widespread poverty in the Region.

Back III. Poverty in Developing Asia	Next B. The Asian Financial Crisis