An online platform should be built for making good statistics of and monitoring poverty situation in east Asian nations so as to provide effective support in working out poverty eradication measures.

The proposal was put forward by participants attending the East Asian Poverty Analysis and Data Initiative (PADI) Consultative Meeting and Regional Workshop on Poverty Monitoring and Evaluation which opened on Thursday in Nanchang, capital of east China's Jiangxi Province.

Shahid Khandker, chief economist with World Bank, believed an online mechanism might effectively facilitate poverty data and information gathering and statistics making within members of PADI.

With reliable statistics obtained from the online platform, experts and government officials of East Asian nations will be able to work with and put forward more efficient measures for poverty eradication after having had the conditions to make a thorough study of poverty features and the reasons causing the poverty in their respective nations.

At present, the poverty monitoring data collected in many regions of the world are full of problems such as incomplete, unreliable and out-of-date, and there is a dire shortage of latest, reliable statistics, plus a lack of capability for analysis, according to the World Bank economist.

PADI came into being in May 2000 at the call of the World Bank Institute. The secretarial office of the organization is based inside International Poverty Reduction Center in China (IPRCC), China's professional organization for carrying out exchange and cooperation with the international community in the field of poverty relief work.

In addition to China, Thailand, Vietnam, the Laos, the Philippines, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Mongolia have signed to be included in PADI.

IPRCC chief Zhang Lei also suggested that more training courses on poverty analysis and data gathering, alongside activities of exchange, should be organized.

The World Bank standard for poverty has it that anyone who lives on less than one US dollars daily should be classified as poor.

According to the World Bank statistics, about 552 million out of the world's 1.1 billion poor people were in East Asia by last year.

The East Asian Poverty Analysis and Data Initiative (PADI) Consultative Meeting and Regional Workshop on Poverty Monitoring and Evaluation were attended by more than 70 government officials, specialists from the above mentioned nine east Asian countries, as well as experts from international organizations.

(Xinhua News Agency May 11, 2007)