Despite conflict Nepal halves poverty incidents

Nepal has been on track to achieve MDGs among a group of 13 Least Developed Countries (LDCs), including some which are emerging from conflicts and others that are highly fragile like Nepal, according to a new report co-authored by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

Though, the group as a whole has been making no or slow progress on 11 indicators, Nepal has been made an impressive improvements in some of the indicators, said Asia Pacific Aspirations: Perspectives for a Post-2015 Development Agenda report that provides an insight into where the region stands with the MDGs and what it must do to accelerate their implementation.

The LDCs group is an early achiever in seven indicators and on track in another three like many LDCs for which data are available have done well in poverty reduction and several other MDGs.
Nepal and Cambodia are early achievers and Lao PDR is on track. Similarly, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Lao PDR and Timor-Leste are all on track in reducing maternal mortality.

Despite a period of internal conflict, Nepal has managed to reduce the incidence of poverty from 53 per cent in 2003 to 25 per cent in 2010, making an impressive achievement due to a combination of several factors including a decrease in household size, increased access to services, an increase in remittances, improvements in real wages and rapid urbanisation, it stated.

According to the report, Nepal had 2.7 per cent unemployment in 2008.

The Proportion of labour force, who are ‘working poor’, at $1.25-a-day poverty line stood at 50.4 per cent and proportion of labour force, who are ‘working poor’, at $2-a-day poverty line stood at 74.1 per cent in 2003, the report said, adding that Nepal is one of the food insecure countries among the Asia and the Pacific countries, according to a composite index is the Economist Intelligence Unit’s ‘global food security index’. “Across a set of 105 countries, the combines measures of food affordability, availability, quality and safety, a country falls under food insecure if it scores below 50. “in 2012 the least food-secure country in Asia and the Pacific was Cambodia with an index of 30, followed by Tajikistan (32.3), Bangladesh (34.6) and Nepal (35.2),” it added.

The government has also incorporated MDGs into the 10^th PRSP (2002-03 –- 2006-07) strategic framework; current three-year National Interim Plan prioritises progress towards MDG achievements; local MDG reports being carried out at the district level.