Business
World Bank Seeks Poverty Eradication By 2030
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim has called for a commitment by the international community to end extreme poverty by 2030.
Kim also stressed the need to improve the lives of the most vulnerable people living in developing countries in this drive.
To reach that goal, Kim said the world would have to reduce the number of people living below the poverty line of 1.25 dollars per day to three per cent globally by 2030, and raise the per capita incomes of the bottom 40 per cent of every developing country.
The three per cent target marks a new goal for the World Bank, which did not provide directly comparable numbers for the current rate of extreme poverty.
The goal would help the World Bank prioritise development projects that have the biggest impact on the poorest and reduce inequality, Kim said.
“Now is the time to commit to ending extreme poverty,” he said in a speech before meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund on April 19 and 20 in Washington.
“We are at an auspicious moment in history, when the successes of past decades and an increasingly favourable economic outlook combine to give developing countries a chance – for the first time ever – to end extreme poverty within a generation,” he added.
The World Bank’s board will consider a new country strategy for India next week that is aimed at reducing poverty by an additional 300 million over the next several years.
An estimated 50 million people were lifted out of poverty in India over the past five years.
Economists have estimated the poverty rate for the developing world in 2012 at about 19 per cent, representing about 1.1 billion people. That is down from 21 per cent in 2010, or about 1.2 billion people.
The overall poverty rate has been falling by about one percentage point a year from 1981 to 2010, according to World Bank data.
The rise of countries like China, India and Brazil has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, according to the World Bank and the U.S.
However, most of the success in reducing poverty has been in China, while regions such as South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa still struggle with high poverty levels.
Fragile states, such as Afghanistan, are also still mired in poverty.
World leaders have called for an end to extreme poverty, including U.S. President, Barack Obama and Malawi’s new leader, Joyce Banda.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, said last month Brazil was close to eradicating extreme poverty through a flagship cash transfer programme for the poor that is being replicated in other countries.
The focus on poverty targets comes as a high-level panel is working on a new global development framework that looks beyond the 2015 UN Millennium Development Goals of halving global poverty and hunger.
Kim said economic growth was important but not enough to cut poverty and shrink the growing gap between rich and poor.
Cornerstone of Financial Services
A survey of more than 1 000 global finance leaders undertaken by digital payment network Ripple shows that 72% of respondents believe they need to offer a digital asset solution to remain competitive.
According to Ripple, leaders from the banking, fintech, corporate and asset management sector have made it clear that the “digital asset revolution is happening now”.
“Digital assets are quickly becoming a cornerstone of financial services, underpinned by progressive regulation, growing interest from Tier-1 banks, a steady consumer shift from banks to fintech providers, and booming stablecoin adoption,” Ripple says.
The survey was conducted in early 2026 and the findings released in March.
Stablecoin Boon or Bane?
Ripple has experienced significant success in the stablecoin sector since launching its Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin in 2024.
With a market cap of $1.56 billion, it is considered a major regulated player in the market.
No doubt the platform was pleased to learn through its own survey that financial leaders were most bullish about stablecoins.
Roughly three-quarters of respondents believed they could boost cash-flow efficiency and unlock trapped working capital.
Ripple noted that finance leaders were thinking about stablecoins as more than “just a new way to execute payments”; instead, they viewed them as effective tools for treasury management.
In March 2026, Ripple began testing a new trade finance model built around RLUSD in a bid to increase the speed of cross-border payments.
The pilot initiative, developed alongside supply chain finance company Unloq [https://unloq.com], is running on the XRP Ledger inside a testing framework developed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
The Asian city-state is one of the platform’s biggest growth markets.
The idea behind the project is to see whether stablecoin-based settlement can streamline trade finance, too often hampered by reliance on intermediaries and slow reconciliation.
The only potential drawback is that if the initiative takes off, the Ripple to USD price could be negatively affected.
Ripple has always championed its native XRP token as a bridge asset, the “middleman” in the process of a financial institution turning dollars in the US into pounds in the UK, for example.
Ripple converts dollars into XRP and then back into pounds.
If RLUSD can do exactly the same thing, questions will be asked about XRP’s relevance.
That is a bridge Ripple will have to cross if it gets to that point.
Tokenisation Partners
Another interesting finding from Ripple’s survey is that most banks and asset managers are seeking tokenisation partners to help execute their strategies.
Some 89% of respondents said digital asset storage and custody were top priority. “Token servicing/lifecycle management also ranks highly for banks at 82%, while asset managers place greater emphasis on primary distribution at 80%,” Ripple found.
The survey also revealed that just more than half of fintechs and financial institutions want an infrastructure provider that can offer a “one-stop-shop solution”. This rose to 71% among corporate financial leaders.
Ripple attributes this to institutions and firms wanting uncomplicated, cohesive systems.
Infrastructure Rules
In its final analysis, Ripple says companies across the board are looking for partners and solutions that are “secure, compliant, battle-tested and that enable growth and execution”.
“The message is clear: infrastructure decisions made today will shape competitive positioning tomorrow.”
No surprise that this is precisely where Ripple is placing much of its focus.