World Bank to send new India strategy to its board: Jim Yong Kim

WASHINGTON: Outlining a bold agenda to end extreme poverty by 2030, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim announced today that a new Country Partnership Strategy for India will be sent to the bank's board next week.

Praising India's efforts to eliminate poverty, Kim said, "India's contribution to ending global poverty could be staggering. In the last five years, roughly 50 million people have been lifted out of poverty in India."

Calling for a world free of poverty, Kim in his speech outlined the ambitious agenda for ending poverty and increasing inclusive growth.

"Next week, we will send to our Board a new Country Partnership Strategy for India, the first such strategy designed with these two goals in mind," Kim said in a major policy speech.

"But in the next generation, we estimate that with a concerted push an additional 300 million Indians could escape extreme poverty," he said in his remarks at the prestigious Georgetown University.

Kim was in India last month, during which he visited Uttar Pradesh.

"We know the end of poverty will not come easily. In the years ahead, as we push toward this goal, the job will become tougher and tougher, because those remaining in poverty will be the hardest to reach," he said.

"Some live in densely populated areas in emerging economies, such as the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, which I visited last month and which accounts for 8 per cent of the people in the world living in extreme poverty," he said.

"People living in Uttar Pradesh need so many things, including improved infrastructure, stronger education systems that prepare students for the work force, and greater inclusion of women and other vulnerable groups in labour markets," Kim said.

"Others who remain trapped in poverty live in countries caught in cycles of fragility. A substantial and growing share of poor people live in fragile or conflict-affected states, where both the need for and the obstacles to development tend to be the greatest. Fragile states must be front and center in any agenda to end extreme poverty," the World Bank President said.