Guangxi Poverty Reduction Program for Results

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The objective of the Guangxi Poverty Reduction Program-for-Results Project for China is to enhance the impact and efficiency of the Guangxi Consolidated Poverty Reduction Program (CPRP) in the Targeted Counties. The Chinese government has established a comprehensive poverty reduction strategy to achieve the goals of the 13th 5YP. Central to this strategy are two institutional innovations which have the potential to provide important global lessons to other countries. The first is accurately targeting poverty households and villages through the establishment of the National Poverty Registration Systemin 2013. The NPRS is a census of poor villages and people in China (about 70 million at its inception), which timely tracks characteristics of the poor and their main causes of poverty. The database is closely integrated into the reporting, prioritization, and accountability lines running upward from the village, county, region, and national levels. It provides critical information from the annual assessments of which households or villages have exited poverty, are at risk of falling back into poverty, or face challenges exiting from poverty. It thus plays a key role in both the identification of the remaining poor and the monitoring of programs to eradicate poverty. Secondly, since 2016, China has introduced the concept of decentralization of poverty reduction efforts with the aim to empower county governments to achieve their poverty targets. It consolidates many earmarked poverty reduction funds into a program-based budgeting system tailored to local context. The designated poverty counties have now been put fully in the driver’s seat for achieving poverty reduction goals. Nevertheless, the program development and implementation remains to be a challenge for the county governments, which face human resources capacity constraints. The Program for Results operation (PforR) enhances these institutional the NPRS database, and aligns fiscal inputs with results by introducing improved planning, budgeting and monitoring systems for poverty programs in Guangxi. It also aims to help to improve the monitoring of poverty reduction programs in one of the most impoverished regions of the country. The lessons from adopting these innovations in Guangxi can serve as learning experience to similar complex settings in the rest of the world and will help the WBG in supporting other countries eradicate extreme poverty by 2030.