Southwest China's underdeveloped province of Guizhou has launched a US$115 million poverty
alleviation project which will benefit 3.67 million poor
farmers.
The project was funded by loans from Japan Bank for
International Cooperation totaling 674 million yuan (US$86
million), while another 224 million yuan would be funded by
provincial and local governments, according to the Guizhou Poverty
Alleviation Office.
It is the biggest ever foreign-funded poverty relief project
that the province has ever carried out.
Some 890,000 rural households from 3,399 villages in Tongren
Prefecture and Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, in eastern
Guizhou, will benefit from the five-year project, according to the
office.
The poverty relief program aims to improve education, health,
water supply and waste treatment in those areas.
Guizhou, one of China's most impoverished regions, still has
2.55 million rural people living in absolute poverty (annual per
capita income less than US$85), accounting for 12 percent of the
country's total.
The number of the poor in China has fallen by more than 100
million to 23.65 million since the government launched its campaign
against rural poverty in 1986.
The Chinese government pledged to cut the number of people in
absolute poverty in rural areas by three million this year, a
senior national poverty relief official said.
(Xinhua News Agency February 21, 2007)