Growth in India, China helping developing nations: World Bank

The global economic crisis has hit poverty reductions efforts worldwide, but plans are still on track to meet a key goal by 2015 according to the World Bank, with India and China making rapid progress.

"The crisis struck just when the developing countries were making significant strides, especially in poverty. Poverty rates were falling in all regions," Delfin Go, lead author of a new World Bank report, told reporters Friday.

"Even in Africa, the rate was falling about one per cent a year from the mid-nineties to about 2005. Although population was growing, the number of poor was actually decreasing because of the rapid progress in China and India," he said.

According to the Global Monitoring Report 2010: The MDGs After the Crisis," that was released yesterday ahead of the two-day Bank-Fund meetings over the weekend, as a result of the crisis, 53 million people that could have been lifted from extreme poverty would fail to improve their condition by 2015.

South Asia was experiencing a very rapid decline (in poverty) because of India according to GO. However he said that outside of India the rate of reduction of poverty was much less, so with the crisis they would also be harder hit than let's say, India."

He added that India was growing very fast even in recent months and years.