Malaysia makes outstanding progress in reducing extreme monetary poverty

KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 17): Malaysia has made outstanding progress in reducing extreme monetary poverty, with merely less than one per cent of Malaysian households living below the national poverty line, says the World Bank.

The World Bank’s Global Knowledge and Research Hub in Malaysia, Senior Economist, Kenneth Simler said in 1970, almost half of the population lived below the national poverty line, which is almost equal to the international poverty line of about RM100 per person per month.

“Using the higher threshold of the median national poverty line used in upper middle-income countries (about RM292 per person per month), Malaysia’s poverty rate has declined from 17 per cent in 2008 to 2.7 per cent in 2015,” he said in a statement here today.

The statement was issued in conjunction with the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty whereby since 1992, Oct 17 has been marked as the day for the world to engage on the progress made and actions needed to end poverty.

However, Simler said against the high-income and developed country standards that Malaysia aspires to achieve, existing gaps and vulnerabilities should not be easily dismissed as isolated cases. – Bernama

Source: TheEdgeMarkets