Developing countries are on track to meet or get close to key targets for tackling extreme poverty and hunger by 2015, thanks to the rapid economic growth in China and India, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund said on April 16 in their Global Monitoring Report 2011.

The report, which highlighted both India and China as major contributors to world poverty eradication, predicted that the two countries will be able to achieve their targets to halve their country’s population suffering in extreme poverty even sooner than their original 2015 goal.

The outstanding economic performance in China and India will likely offset the sluggish development in some African countries, so that aggregate poverty reduction goals will still be realized. However, as many as 17 countries are still far away from meeting the halving target, according to the report.

Extreme poverty eradication stands as Goal One – as well as the most basic one – in the comprehensive Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It aims to reduce the amount of people that live on less than US$1.25 per day to 838 million, from 2005’s 1.4 billion.

Developing countries are also making significant improvements in other dimensions of the MDGs, especially on life fundamentals and education. Most of them are on track to achieving UN goals for access to safe drinking water, hunger, gender parity in primary and secondary education as well as primary education completion.

However, progress in other aspects is less impressive. 45 percent of developing countries fail to meet the target on access to sanitation, and nearly 40 percent of developing nations still have a long way to go before achieving the maternal and child mortality targets.