World Bank adopts inclusive strategies to grow SMEs, reduce poverty 

From AMECHI OGBONNA, Washington DC, USA
In what appears to be another deliberate strategy to redefine the narratives of economic development in low income countries, the World Bank Group (WBG), Wednesday, said it was unfolding a new agenda to fast-track income growth in economies where majority of their citizens still earn less than $2 a day to bring them to a more acceptable earnings bracket.
The WBG’s decision to add income tracking to its poverty fighting mandate and thus further the goal of promoting shared prosperity was informed by its desire to also grow the earnings potentials of the bottom 40 per cent of the world population.
President of the World Bank, Mr. Jim Yong Kim, who gave this indication at a session titled, “From Poverty to Prosperity” at its ongoing annual meetings in Washington DC, the United States (US), stated that the whole idea was to reduce global poverty further to about 9 per cent in 2020 and 3 per cent by 2030, through inclusive development measures.
Part of the new initiative, he explained, was to assist respective jurisdictions create conducive environments for the growth of Small and Medium scale Enterprises (SMEs) and also boost development of micro-enterprises, which usually create huge employment opportunities in developing countries.
Against this background, Mr. Kim hinted that the bank was partnering the United Nations and six other regional development banks across the world to tackle the development challenges of low-income countries like Nigeria where majority of their citizens still live below global poverty line.
He stated that going forward, the bank would embark on some risky and transformational projects that would lift more people out of poverty, adding that the idea was to create impetus for further economic growth in poor countries in Latin America, Asia and especially sub-Saharan Africa where more than 60 per cent of the world’s estimated 680 million extremely poor people currently live.
According to the bank, Africa must be assisted to produce for the global market, hence the need for balanced growth that will contribute more to the social wage, an indication that the infrastructural and institutional challenges of such nations would soon be brought to the front burner under the WBG development agenda.
To achieve the proposed growth trajectory, Kim said the bank would be working with transformational leadership that would strengthen social contracts with the citizens, to develop policy initiatives that would reduce unemployment and adopt intervention measures that support poverty reduction.
Meanwhile, other discussants at the session, including South Africa’s Finance Minister, Pravin Gordhan and Helen Clark, administrator, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), were of the view that though millions of people have moved out of extreme poverty since 2000, prosperity for those at the lower end of the income spectrum has remained elusive while inequality has continued to rise in several countries.
The bank would wish to work with a more sensitive political class to keep the present generation out of extreme poverty through inclusive development strategies and democratic institutional building.