China plans to increase its BPL to uplift 80 mn lives

In a bid to enable 80 million people get state benefits, China, the world's most populous nation, plans to increase its existing threshhold at $152 a year to $186, media reports said today.     

The proposal to raise China's poverty line was put forward much before last month, when the global yardstick was changed after World Bank raised the poverty line from $1 to $1.25 a day.     

The State Council, or the country's cabinet, will discuss raising the poverty line by the end of the year, China Daily quoted Renmin University of China professor Wang Sangui as saying.     

Reports said that Lu Yan, spokeswoman for the council's Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, had confirmed that the authorities were considering the proposal but declined to give details.     

The existing poverty threshold in China is an income of 1,067 yuan ($152) a year as cost of living there is lower that in many other countries.     

About 43 million people were living below the poverty line in the country's rural areas in 2007.

Their number in urban areas was more than 22 million, the daily said.

If the proposed 1,300-yuan-a-year ($186) income becomes the new threshold, the number of poor would increase to 80 million.     

"As China moves toward becoming a country with mid-level per capita income, it has become necessary to redefine poverty," Wang Xiaolu, deputy director of the China Reform Foundation's National Economic Research Institute was quoted as saying by the paper.