ADB to assist on poverty alleviation and HIV prevention projects

Asia Development Bank (ADB) has signed an agreement with the Myanmar government, with cash funding provided by the Japanese government, to carry out poverty alleviation and HIV prevention projects for rural people, according to bank officials.

“The cash assistance for the livelihood of rural people is aimed at poverty reduction and community-based development,” said Putu Kamayana from the ADB.

The cash assistance of US$ 12 million (Ks 11.83 billion) is aimed at helping needy people living in the Ayeyawady Delta Region and central Myanmar, as well as Taninthari Region and Shan State, because the poverty rate in rural areas has increased by twice the urban rate, according to the ADB’s reports.

Tin Ngwe, deputy minister of Livestock, Fisheries and Rural Development, said that the ministry will implement rural development programmes on a first-priority basis using the cash assistance, which is now aimed at the construction of basic infrastructures such as roads, jetties, water and irrigation facilities, schools and rural health centres.

Nearly 200,000 people in Myanmar are infected with HIV disease. US$ 10 million will go to provide HIV/AIDS control services because the outbreak of infectious diseases including HIV is now increasing in Myanmar’s remote areas.

The project, with funding of US$ 22 million from the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction (JFPR), aims to provide health care services for rural people.

The ADB has spent US$ 620 million on poverty reduction programs.

source: Eleven Myanmar

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