KATHMANDU, OCT 18 - 2013
Nepal has made a significant progress in terms of reducing hunger, according to a latest Global Hunger Index (GHI) report 2013.
The report prepared by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has placed Nepal in the 49th position in 2013 with a score of 17.3. Nepal was placed 60th position in the GHI index in 2012. The report shows that Nepal hunger status has decreased by 38.21 percent in the last two decades.
The survey based among 120 countries shows that Nepal has moved to “serious” from “alarming” situation over a 12-month span in the GHI index. The GHI stats as monitored by IFPRI show that in 1990, Nepal’s GHI score was 28.0, which fell to 27.3 in 1995, 25.3 in 2000 and 22.3 in 2005. However, it rose to 20.3 in 2012 before improving to 17.3 in 2013.
The GHI considers a score above 30 as extremely alarming, 20-29.9 alarming, 10-19.9 serious, 5-9.9 moderate and 4.9 low. The score for India has improved slightly from 22.9 in 2012 to 21.3 in 2013. The GHI calculation does not include higher-income countries.
Among Saarc countries, Nepal is ahead of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan but behind Sri Lanka on the index. Afghanistan and Bhutan has not been included in the index due to the lack of data. The report combines three hunger-related indicators—the proportion of undernourished in the population, the prevalence of underweight in children and the mortality rate of children.
The stats show 18 percent of the population to be undernourished, 29.1 percent of under-five children to be underweight and 4.8 percent of them dying before they reach five years of age.
The data for undernourishment is based on data from 2010-12, prevalence of underweight children (2008-12) and the under-five mortality rate (2011).
“Remittance has emerged as one of the biggest factors in poverty reduction or it has played a key role at pulling people out of hunger,” said agro economist Hari Krishna Upadhyaya. “The better income has improved both nutritional and health aspects.”
For example, unlike in past years when meat used to be consumed only on special occasions, Nepalis are eating meat more frequently nowadays.
According to the Third Nepal Living Standard Survey 2010-11, 55.8 percent of households receive remittance, with each household on an average receiving Rs 80,436 a year.
Nepal gets 25 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) from remittances—the highest among the South Asian countries, according to the latest ‘Migration and Development Brief’ published by the World Bank.
Nepal received remittance worth Rs 434 billion in the fiscal year 2012-13, according to the Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB). The report has shown that remittance is being used heavily for consumption purposes—as much as 78.9 percent.
The number of the hungry in the world, however, has remained unacceptably high. In 2010-2012, about 870 million people were chronically undernourished, and according to the FAO, this number declined only slightly to 842 million in 2011-2013. Over the period between 1990 and 2013, the world GHI fell almost by 34 percent, from a score of 20.8 to 13.8.
South Asia has the highest 2013 GHI score, although it witnessed the steepest decline in GHI scores since 1990, to almost 11 points, the report says. Between 1990 and 2013, 23 countries reduced their GHI scores by 50 percent or more. Forty-six countries made a modest progress, with their GHI scores dropping by 25 to 49.9 percent, and 21 countries decreased their GHI scores by less than 25 percent.
GLOBAL HUNGER INDEX 2013
NEPAL POSITION 2013 - 49
2012 - 60
Undernourished population
2010-12 - 18%
Underweight children <5 br="" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" yrs="">2008-12 - 29%
Under-5 mortality
2011 - 4.8%
Source: The Kathmandu Post
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