Gansu and Inner Mongolia Poverty Reduction Project

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The Western Poverty Reduction Project aims to reduce the incidence of absolute poverty in remote and inaccessible villages of Gansu and Qinghai Provinces and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in China. The project empowers poor households in the selected poor counties to raise their incomes, through increased grain and livestock production sufficient to meet the basic needs of food and clothing and, in many cases, also generate a marketable surplus to improve living standards. The project has eight components. The first supports land and household development by providing improved agricultural and livestock technology packages--seeds, fertilizer, insecticides, plastic mulches, breeding/fattening stock; developing forests; and upgrading agricultural and livestock support services. The second component improves irrigation and land by building a new dam, renovating an existing dam, and constructing irrigation and drainage systems. The other six components 1) improve rural roads, build drinking water supply facilities, and extend electric power lines; 2) provide credit to establish non-state owned and household-based rural enterprises; 3) organize and place on a voluntary basis surplus rural laborers in off-farm employment; 4) support voluntary placement of some of the absolute poor living in mountains and local herders and farmers; 5) construct and upgrade basic education and health facilities; and 6) fund institution building and project management. Note: The above abstract is derived from the Project Appraisal Document. An updated project description as of March 10, 2003 is provided below: A loan of $160 million for the China Western Poverty Reduction Project was approved by the Bank's Board on June 24, 1999. The project originally included three components in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region as well as Gansu and Qinghai Provinces. While project activities in Gansu and Inner Mongolia began shortly thereafter, no Bank funds were disbursed or work undertaken on the Qinghai component until the Bank's Board could decide on the results of a review by the Bank's Inspection Panel. On July 7, 2000, after extensive discussions with the Bank's Management and Board of Directors, the Chinese authorities decided to cancel the Qinghai component of the project and undertake the work with their own resources. Consistent with this decision, the project was renamed the Gansu and Inner Mongolia Poverty Reduction Project.