Southwest China's underdeveloped province of Guizhou has launched a US$115 million poverty alleviation project which will benefit 3.67 million poor farmers.

The project was funded by loans from Japan Bank for International Cooperation totaling 674 million yuan (US$86 million), while another 224 million yuan would be funded by provincial and local governments, according to the Guizhou Poverty Alleviation Office.

It is the biggest ever foreign-funded poverty relief project that the province has ever carried out.

Some 890,000 rural households from 3,399 villages in Tongren Prefecture and Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, in eastern Guizhou, will benefit from the five-year project, according to the office.

The poverty relief program aims to improve education, health, water supply and waste treatment in those areas.

Guizhou, one of China's most impoverished regions, still has 2.55 million rural people living in absolute poverty (annual per capita income less than US$85), accounting for 12 percent of the country's total.

The number of the poor in China has fallen by more than 100 million to 23.65 million since the government launched its campaign against rural poverty in 1986.

The Chinese government pledged to cut the number of people in absolute poverty in rural areas by three million this year, a senior national poverty relief official said.

(Xinhua News Agency February 21, 2007)