Himalayan News Service

Manila, March 24:

Countries and development organisations must step up their efforts to coordinate on poverty monitoring, if they are to more efficiently help the millions of Asians mired in poverty, a conference hosted by Asian Development Bank (ADB) heard today.

If current trends continue, Asia is in danger of not meeting the Millennium Development Goals, ADB vice-president Geert van der Linden told the opening of the three-day long Regional Conference on Poverty Monitoring in Asia, states a press release issued today by ADB.

“ADB has joined the global community in adopting the Millennium Development Goals as the benchmark for monitoring progress at the national and regional levels,” he said.

“But we still have to establish a monitoring framework that will guide us in formulating and carrying out effective poverty reduction programs. We also need to better understand the relationships between growth patterns and the MDGs,” he added.

He said measures of poverty that are consistent and accurate have a key role to play in ensuring the correct allocation of resources at national as well as local and possibly even project levels. “Many millions of people still live in abject poverty and suffer unacceptably high levels of mortality,” he added.

“As we work toward our goals of reducing poverty and attaining the MDGs, we should be under no illusion that the task ahead is anything but formidable,” he said The MDGs constitute binding goals that define results of development processes, but no comprehensive guidelines for development cooperation in general, said Klemens van der Sand, commissioner for the Millennium Development Goals and deputy director-general in the federal ministry for economic cooperation and development (BMZ) in Germany.

“They lay down what should be achieved but make no statement on how these goals are to be reached,” he said.

“It is with regard to the question of what to do in pursuing the goals and how to do it that poverty monitoring must provide feedback and inputs,” he added.

He added that inter-institutional cooperation will play an indispensable role in successful poverty monitoring.

“It is far too often that we still find various international and national players to be acting in parallel, with insufficient coordination and little willingness to engage in mutual exchange and joint learning,” he said.

More than 80 delegates from Bangladesh, the People’s Republic of China, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Viet Nam and Kenya are attending the conference, states the release.

Delegates include high-ranking government officials, university researchers, nongovernment organisation representatives and professionals working for bi- and multilateral donor agencies.

The event is jointly organized by BMZ, the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ), the Center for Poverty Analysis (CEPA), and ADB.