UNDP Poverty Report 2000

A Pioneering National Poverty Programme

Kyrgyzstan, one of the first CIS countries to try to implement an explicit poverty programme, adopted the National Programme on Overcoming Poverty - Araket - in early 1998. The programme lists eliminating income poverty - and raising people's standard of living - as the goal of the country's ongoing reforms. Still at an early stage, implementation of the new programme needs more donor support for capacity building.

Araket's traditional income measure of poverty shows that about 51% of the population was poor in 1997. The target is to reduce this to 10% by 2015. That would imply both rapid growth and reduced inequality. Economic growth approached 10% in 1997 but flagged with the financial and economic crisis in Russia. How this slowdown has affected poverty is not yet known.

An Orthodox Approach

Araket's orthodox approach to poverty reduction combines employment-intensive growth with human resource development and adds a safety net for the hard-core poor. It distinguishes people able to work (to be integrated into the economy through growth and social services) and such vulnerable groups as children, retired people and the disabled (to be reached through targeted social assistance).

The emphasis is on getting the poor to help themselves - as the name Araket, or effort, suggests. Poverty reduction is closely identified with employment. During the transition the government has maintained social sector spending, and it recently increased the budget for social welfare. It has tried to target social assistance more effectively to the needy, but payments have often been months late or made in kind, such as with flour or oil rather than cash. And the subsidies for housing and communal services appear to benefit the better-off.

A major constraint is the government's lack of capacity to implement a comprehensive national programme, especially one more people-centred and participatory. Much more capacity will have to be built in local governments, civil society organizations and the central government.

The Need for Better Management

Another problem is that Araket overlaps with national programmes for employment, women, health and education. It needs a clear institutional and management structure to implement a multidimensional approach and form operational links with other government programmes. That structure is still lacking. So is a consistent approach to development, because the medium-term development plan does not even have poverty reduction as a key goal.

The poverty programme also lacks an explicit budget. And external donors have provided little support, even though a Poverty Alleviation Fund was created in mid-1998. The management unit that runs the fund is the secretariat of the National Poverty Alleviation Commission, the interagency coordinating committee chaired by the prime minister. But the commission has met only once since early 1998. In the meantime the fund management unit has tried to decentralize by setting up offices in each of the country's six provinces - but with too few resources. Moreover, confusion prevails over whether the fund or the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection is responsible for the poverty agenda - a common problem in trying to set up structures parallel to the government machinery.

Organizing poor communities is not an explicit objective of the programme, but the poor do participate in activities through ashar, a traditional means of mutual help, usually among neighbours, for such projects as building a house. Communities now apply ashar to identify common development priorities and determine how much each household can contribute to the endeavour - giving the community a bigger say in choosing development projects.