“Xiengkhuang 63.0 429 a Vientiane province 07 a8 20 orknamsay 168 : 29 104 rammuane an as a4 Savannanet 54 a9 47 Xaysomboom-SR es : Southern region 47 2. saravene 496 382 Sekong ero 497 0 ‘Champasack 4 ° 74 20 ‘Atapeu eos 490 45 Lao POR 40 au 33 The incidence of poverty estimated by region and province is presented in Table 9. The results show that 46 percent of the Lao PDR population lived in poverty in 1992-3, whereas in 1997-98, the percentage of poor fell to 39.1. Thus, the incidence of poverty declined at an annual rate of 3.3 percent. With an annual economic growth rate of 4.6 percent, the annual rate of poverty reduction of 3.3 percent is relatively modest. If the same rate of poverty continues in future, then it will take more than twenty years for the percent of poor to come down to about 20 percent. This is clearly a slow rate of poverty reduction. Along with rapid economic growth, the government needs to accelerate the poverty reduction process by following more pro-poor policies that would benefit the poor more than the rich. As is evident from Table 9, the incidence of poverty varies quite substantially across regions and provinces. Among the four regions, the northern region has the highest percentase of poor at 47.3 percent in 1997-8, despite the decline from the still higher level ot'51.6 percent in 1992-3. In contrast, the ineidence of poverty in Vientiane Municipality has been the lowest: the poverty incidence was 33.6 percent in 1992-3 and only 13.5 percent in 1997-8. Followed by the North, the Southern region has the second highest proportion of population living in poverty.'' "" Note that this result is in contrast with the results in World Bank (1995) which identified the South as the poorest region in 1992-3.