Bigger role urged for NGOs on poverty reduction

BEIJING - Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) should play a bigger role in reducing poverty, an NGO president said Friday.

Charity organizations should solve certain poverty-related problems in a direct and efficient way, said Duan Yingbi, president of the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA), a major NGO specializing in poverty reduction.

Duan cited school construction as an example, stating that such construction could be completed within a relatively short time via charitable projects in comparison to the lengthy amount of time needed by the government to build a similar school.

NGOs should join forces with society to fight poverty, he said.

Duan said he hopes the government will make it easier to NGOs to become registered, as well as improve tax deduction policies for donors.

He urged NGOs to be more professional and transparent in terms of their funding and charitable efforts in order to win more public support.

"Poverty reduction may be mainly accomplished by NGOs in the future, as poverty-stricken people will be more scattered and have more individual demands in comparison to the current concentration of povertized individuals in remote areas," he said.

Based on the current poverty line of 2,300 yuan (about $366) in annual net income per capita, China has 128 million impoverished people living in rural areas, or 13.4 percent of the rural population.

The CFPA, founded in 1989, had collected donations worth a total of 5.7 billion yuan (about $907 million) and offered aid to about 15 million people by the end of 2012.