The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Washington

The World Bank called on Friday for agriculture to take center stage in development policies and pledged to boost its lending to the sector after allowing it to decline in 1980s and 1990s.

"We need to give agriculture more prominence across the board," World Bank President Robert Zoellick said at the presentation of the institution's annual World Development Report. "At the global level, countries must deliver on vital reforms such as cutting distorting subsidies and opening markets, while civil society groups, especially farmer organizations, need more say in setting the agricultural agenda."

The report acknowledged that Bank lending to agriculture had declined from 1980 to 2000 but said its support for rural development had begun to pick up four years ago and would increase further. Commitments this year are expected to come to 3.1 billion dollars.

Nevertheless, while 75 percent of the world's poor live in rural areas "a mere 4.0 percent of official development assistance goes to agriculture in developing countries," the report found.

In sub-Saharan Africa furthermore, public spending on farming amounts to only 4.0 percent of total government expenditure.

The report said that for the poorest people an improvement in a country's gross domestic product that is agriculture-driven is four times more effective in reducing poverty than is GDP growth originating in other sectors.

"It will be an illusion that they (the poor) will simply be absorbed by growth taking place outside agriculture," World Bank Chief Economist Francois Bourguignon said, citing the persistence of rural poverty in the flourishing economies of China and India.

"Poverty is overwhelmingly rural and will be for decades to come," he added.