The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) launched on Friday in Phnom Penh the case study reports on poverty reduction for six countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

Six country case studies on Macroeconomics of Poverty Reduction for Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Mongolia, Nepal and Vietnam were officially launched at the two-day second regional workshop on the Macroeconomics of Poverty Reduction.

"The launching of these reports is very timely, especially for Cambodia," said Keat Chhon, Cambodia's economy and finance minister.

Keat Chhon added that the report would be complementary and synergy to address the Cambodian government's ultimate goal to alleviate poverty.

The series of research shows that for Cambodia, Mongolia and Nepal growth rates were too low for satisfactory poverty reduction and that only a few countries are likely to sustain the extraordinary growth rates of China and Vietnam.

However, the report said Bangladesh represents a model for many developing countries as it managed a distribution neutral growth, which brought an additional ten-percentage-point decline in the proportion of people living under the poverty line.

With two-third of the world's poor living in Asia, pro-poor macroeconomic policies are critical to the process of poverty reduction.

Officials from 15 Asia-Pacific countries and organizations attended the workshop.

The aim of the workshop is to discuss the way forward and capacity development on pro-poor economic policies in the context of designing the second phase of the Regional Program on the Macroeconomics of Poverty Reduction.

Source: Xinhua