World Bank pledges drive to cut poverty: Preston fails to respond to demands from Clinton to set more precise targets
MR Lewis Preston, World Bank president, yesterday promised to strengthen the bank's efforts to reduce poverty in developing countries. 'Poverty reduction must be the benchmark against which our performance as a development institution is judged,' he said. However, he failed to respond to demands from the Clinton administration for the bank to set more precise targets for the proportion of lending that should have an explicit poverty focus. In congressional testimony this week, Mr Lloyd Bentsen, US treasury secretary, said the US wanted to see more funding that 'will create social and economic safety nets' for poor people most affected by war, civil strife and economic mismanagement. 'We will look for specific increases in the share of lending going for these purposes.' In fiscal 1992, nearly half of all World Bank adjustment loans failed to include specific poverty reduction measures, in spite of calls from Mr Preston to put greater emphasis on poverty relief. The share of bank lending allocated for 'human resource development' is still only 14 per cent, in spite of repeated calls from Mr Preston for an increased emphasis on investment in people. At a news conference Mr Preston said the bank was making progress: a decade ago only 5 per cent of bank lending went for human resource development and only 5 per cent of structural adjustment loans had a explicit focus on poverty. But he said the bank had a 'long, long way to go'. While he expected an increase in the share of bank lending aimed at poverty relief, he declined to set precise targets for bank staff. Mr Preston, however, does intend to take several new steps to sharpen the bank's focus on poverty. The bank will publish annual progress reports charting its progress in poverty reduction. It will also seek the participation of the poor in the design as well as the implemention of projects. 'We want this to become the norm for our operations in the years to come,' Mr Preston said. He also released a report, 'Implementing the World Bank's Strategy to Reduce Poverty - Progress and Challenges,' that outlines progress to date. This highlights the diversity of performance on poverty reduction in the third world. East Asia has reduced the proportion of people in absolute poverty from over 30 per cent in 1970 to 10 per cent. Sub-Saharan Africa, however, had seen an increase in poverty which now affected half the people in the region. Mr Preston said bank efforts to reduce poverty could succeed only if governments concerned co-operated. Officials cited Indonesia, China, Mexico, and El Salvador as examples of countries that were co-operating well but declined to name poor performers. He said hoped for a clear signal from this week's meeting of the Group of Seven leading industrial countries that they would deliver on commitments for a Dollars 18bn replenishment of resources for the International Development Agency (IDA), the centrepiece of bank efforts to reduce poverty.
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