KATHMANDU: The poverty in the country has decreased by 1.4 per cent point in the current fiscal year due to increase in literacy rate, rise in agriculture and non-agriculture wages and remittance inflows.

According to the economic survey 2012/13, the poverty rate has decreased from 25.2 per cent point to 23.8 per cent point.

Development and expansion of commercial vegetable farming has also contributed to poverty reduction albeit less, it is said.

However, the poverty has not reduced as forecasted by the government. The government had targeted to lower the poverty rate to 21 per cent in the tri-year plan, which is ending with the end of the current fiscal year.

Lack of full budget and expenses of capital expenditures are also blamed for failure to achieve the target in poverty reduction.

The poverty rate is calculated based on interrelations of poverty and per capita gross national consumption income.

Likewise, the government has estimated to get Rs 46.98 billion foreign assistance in the current fiscal against which is 15.1 per cent more than the last fiscal year. Last year, Rs 40.81 foreign assistance was received.

STOCKHOLM: The World Bank says it will increasingly view its efforts to help developing countries fight poverty through a “climate lens.”

In a report released Wednesday, the international lending institution warned that heat waves, rising seas, more severe storms and other impacts of climate change will trap millions of people in poverty.

As a result, the Washington-based bank said it is stepping up support for efforts to curb climate change and to help the world adapt to it.

“Urgent action is needed to not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but also to help countries prepare for a world of dramatic climate change and weather extremes,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kimsaid in a statement.

Already by the 2030s, 40 percent of the land used to grow maize in sub-Saharan Africa will be unable to sustain that crop because of droughts and heat, the report said. Also by that time, sea level rise coupled with more intense cyclones could inundate much of Thailand’s capital, Bangkok, it said.

“At the World Bank Group, we are concerned that unless the world takes bold action now, a disastrously warming planet threatens to put prosperity out of reach of millions and roll back decades of development,” Kim said. “In response we are stepping up our mitigation, adaptation, and disaster risk management work, and will increasingly look at all our business through a ‘climate lens.'”

In a conference call, bank Vice President Rachel Kyte said the World Bank doubled its lending aimed at adaptation efforts to $4.6 billion in 2012.

She said that money was separate from the adaptation funds transferred from rich to poor countries in U.N. climate talks. The developed countries have pledged to ramp that financing up to $100 billion annually by 2020. Critics say that won’t be enough, pointing to the New York’s recently announced $20 billion plan — for that city alone — to stave off rising seas with flood gates, levees and other defenses.

Aid groups and climate activists welcomed the report, which was launched in London and prepared for the World Bank by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics, both based in Germany.

“The World Bank must go beyond ringing the alarm bell,” said Sasanka Thilakasiri, of British charity Oxfam. “It must ensure its own lending meets the needs of the people who are most vulnerable to climate change.”