People prepare to plant rice seedlings as the monsoon season begins at Chhampi village in Lalitpur, Nepal, June 22, 2019. (Xinhua/Sunil Sharma)
The population below the poverty line is expected to decrease 16.5 percent at the end of the current fiscal year 2019-20 or mid-July this year, from 42 percent in 1990, Nepali Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli said.
KATHMANDU, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- Nepal has been able to reduce the number of people living below the poverty line substantially in the last three decades, Nepali Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli said Saturday.
Addressing the House of Representatives, the lower house of the Nepali parliament, the prime minister said the population below the poverty line is expected to decrease 16.5 percent at the end of the current fiscal year 2019-20 or mid-July this year, from 42 percent in 1990.
"About 4.4 million people are expected to remain below the poverty line at the end of the current fiscal year," he added while presenting the achievements of the current government in the last two years.
Nepal's population, as per the census in 2011, is 26.49 million as Nepal prepares for another population census this year. "We will move ahead to eradicate poverty not only reduce it," Oli said.■
