Sunday, May 14, 2006

Poverty Reduction: Chinese Government becoming serious

(By Razib Ahmed)
So much we head about China's rise as a world economic super power but compared to this, we hardly can see anything about the miserable poverty that millions of people in China are suffering. Actually, if you leave out some major cities, the rest of the country is still a long way behind than having a decent life standard. That is why I am so happy that the Chinese government is now planning to set up a special fund to alleviate poverty in the country. From 2001 and 2005, China's government allocated $ 7.15 billion for poverty reduction and now the government is going to be very active in trying to improve the condition of life in the poor regions in the country. I am quoting here from Xinhua:

"Between 2001 and 2005, China's central coffer arranged 57.2 billion yuan (7.15 billion U.S. dollars) of poverty relief fund, with an annual increase of 6.45 percent.
"This is utterly insufficient for the huge poverty-stricken population, which stood at 23.65 million in the rural areas at the end of last year," Tian told Xinhua in an exclusive interview Sunday.
Nor is there enough fund from China's financial institutions, he said. "None of the four big state-owned commercial banks has a branch in the needy areas."
An industrial fund for poverty reduction purposes would therefore be an effective way to raise funds for the benefits of the poverty-stricken population and the investors alike, as it is expected to yield higher returns, said Tian."
(Source: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-05/14/content_4544473.htm)

This is a very good initiative taken by the Chinese government. The reality is that if all the people in a country do not enjoy the benefit of economic development, then the development cannot be continued for a long time.

I hope that the Indian government now come forward to follow China. A few days ago, I wrote a post in my another blog with the headline, " 60 million malnourished and underweight children: Is it India?"

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Poverty remains a huge problem in China, not just for those who are poor, but for the government who fears those who are poor. I have no doubt Beijing wants to fix things in the countryside, but it definitely remains to be seen as to whether it has the horsepower to pull it off.