Effective evaluation

The 10 targeted poverty alleviation projects, introduced since 2015 by the Central Government, are breakthroughs to eliminate poverty, said Liu Yongfu.

“For example, rural residents are able to integrate funds to improve local infrastructure, public services and advantageous industries through a whole village promotion project,” said Liu.

Other measures including micro-credit, e-commerce, tourism, and photovoltaic power poverty alleviation projects have been also implemented, effectively helping increase farmers’ incomes.

So far, the Central Government has already allocated this year’s poverty relief funds of 66 billion yuan ($9.8 billion) to local governments, a 43.4 percent increase from last year.

Many local officials have been held accountable for the progress and results of local poverty relief work, under a set of new assessment measures issued by the Central Government early this year. Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, for instance, has changed the performance evaluation focus from GDP figures to real achievements in poverty alleviation for its local officials.

By linking poverty alleviation results to local officials’ performance assessments, there is confidence that the goal of lifting all of China’s impoverished people out of poverty and building a relatively well-off society in an all-round way by 2020 can be achieved on time, said Kang Chunpeng from the Information Center of the Ministry of Agriculture. Comments to yunan@chinafrica.cn