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 | Friday, April 28, 2000, updated at 09:39(GMT+8) | ||||||||||||
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WFP to Provide Poverty-Relief Aid to ChinaA five-year project to provide China with 80,000 tons of wheat for poverty relief was launched on April 27 by the UN World Food Program.According to the project, the aid will help some 400,000 poor rural families in the Qinling Mountain Range of Shaanxi and Hubei provinces to improve their skills, food production, local infrastructure, environment to relieve poverty. The implementation of the project will greatly boost China's poverty-relief effort in its western regions where most of China's remaining poor population live, said Chinese Vice-Minister of Agriculture Liu Jian at the signing ceremony. The Chinese government attaches great importance to poverty relief. China's poor population were reduced to 34 million in 1999 from 230 million in 1978, Liu said, adding that eradicating poverty is still a tough job for the government. Else Larsen, WFP Representative in China, said that China has recorded impressive achievements in eliminating poverty. " We are very pleased with the Chinese government for gradually increasing cost sharing with WFP for this and future projects," she said. Since 1979, WFP has provide China with 64 food aid projects worth near US$ 900 million, the largest among all UN institutions. The aid has played an important role in improving the life of farmers and production in China's poor areas, said Liu.
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