Nepal Resident Mission

Reaching the Poor

Women and people from disadvantaged groups constitute the majority of the poor in Nepal. Inequalities are wide across geographic regions and ecological zones; gender, ethnic, and caste lines; and the rural-urban areas. Poverty incidence is more prevalent, intense, and severe in rural areas than in urban areas, and among ethnic minorities and dalits than brahmins. Genderbased exclusion is pervasive and deep-rooted. Discrimination against women reduces their physical survival, health and educational opportunities, ownership of assets, mobility, and overall status.

Poverty reduction initiatives can achieve greater success by improving the poor and disadvantaged group's access to resources and removing the institutional constraints that bar the poor from accessing these resources. To ensure that the poor, especially women and disadvantaged communities, benefit from poverty reduction efforts, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) accords high priority to social inclusion in its assistance.

ADB is helping the Government achieve its poverty reduction target by assisting the following sectors—agriculture and rural development, education, energy, finance, transport, and water supply. ADB is also helping the Government address the issues of governance (anticorruption; and financial, public sector, and civil service reforms), empowerment, environment, and other reforms.

• Enabling Farmers
• Financial Empowerment
• Education for Poor
• Connecting Rural Areas
• Providing Safe Water

Enabling Farmers

Agriculture is the mainstay of the Nepalese economy, with more than 80% of its working population engaged in subsistence agriculture. Nepal also has one of the highest livestock populations per capita and per unit of cultivable land among Asian countries. Livestock is an integral part of Nepal’s economic activities, providing both additional household income and nutrition for the family.

ADB is supporting the development of the agriculture sector through assistance for irrigation, crop diversification, and community livestock development. The Community Livestock Development Project, the fourth ADB-supported livestock development project in Nepal since 1980, seeks to improve food security, nutrition, income, and employment from livestock production and small-scale livestock-related enterprises for 164,000 families in 48 districts, including those in mid- and far-western regions.

Another ADB-assisted Crop Diversification Project is also targeted to uplift the socioeconomic status of poor farmers. The Project intends to increase farmers’ income in poverty-stricken regions by promoting production and marketing of agriculture sector crops, with a particular focus on increasing production of secondary crops in potential areas.

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Financial Empowerment

Microfinance plays a significant role in reducing poverty by providing the poor with improved facilities to save and to have better access to credit and insurance. By increasing women’s access to funds, microfinance empowers women financially and also helps enhance the role of women within society. Microfinance is another area where ADB is assisting Nepal. The Rural Microfinance Development Project is expected to benefit about 720,000 households, of which 75% to 80% of the beneficiaries will be poor women, and the remainder will be men and women near the rural poverty line.

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Education for Poor

Despite considerable progress in recent decades, access to education in Nepal remains limited. This restricts employment opportunities for the poor, worsens inequalities, and constrains economic development. Building on its earlier interventions to improve the quality of education, ADB is currently assisting the education sector with two projects: the Teacher Education Project and the Secondary Education Support Project.

The Teacher Education Project is a follow-up to ADB’s first Primary Education Development Project, and aims to establish an effective and sustainable teacher education system for primary education. The Project will improve access to basic education for girls and other disadvantaged groups by encouraging increased recruitment of teachers from these groups, and providing fellowship for pre-service training to women and candidates from other disadvantaged groups.

The Secondary Education Support Project, a follow-up to ADB’s first Secondary Education Development Project, aims to improve the quality of public secondary education in Nepal and increase access to education for the underserved groups, particularly girls and children from disadvantaged groups.

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Connecting Rural Areas

Roads play an important role in the development of agriculture, health, education, trade and commerce. Currently, farmers in Nepalese villages often travel on foot for more than 2 days to trade their produce in a regional market. Through the Road Network Development Project, ADB is helping the Government reduce poverty by improving access to markets, social facilities, and income and employment opportunities. The Project will improve and maintain the East-West Highway and other strategic and important roads throughout Nepal.

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Providing Safe Water

Despite abundant water resources, Nepal’s harsh terrain makes access to clean water supply difficult for much of the population, particularly those in rural areas. Women and children, who often must spend 4 or 5 hours a day gathering water from distant sources, bear the burden of water shortage.

ADB is assisting the Government address the issue through the Community-Based Water Supply and Sanitation Project. The Project, designed and developed through extensive stakeholder consultations, aims to extend safe water and sanitation services to underserved populations in poor and remote areas of mid- and far-western Nepal. The Project plans to improve facilities in 1,200 communities across 21 districts, benefiting about 850,000 people.