Asian Development Bank releases it's 2009 "Key Indicators" report

The Asian Development Bank released the 2009 version of it's "Key Indicators" report. The report notes the many ways the global economic slowdown has hurt poverty reduction efforts in the continent.

The report pays special attention to small business and ways to help them fuel growth. The bank uses part of the report to focuses on small business because it says that a majority of Asians are employed in such companies.

From the Forbes article on the report, writer Teresa Cerojano details some of the economic indicators described within. You can download the full report from this link.

In 19 Asian economies, including the most populous China and India, more than 10 percent of people live on less than $1.25 a day and more than 10 percent are malnourished. This is despite the region's success over the last 15 years in cutting the number of poor from one in two to around one in four, the report said.

Nepal is the worst off with 55.1 percent of its population surviving on less than $1.25 a day. In China and India, 15.9 percent and 41.6 percent of the population live below the poverty line, respectively.

Income gap remains wide in many other countries.

More than 30 percent of Tajikistan's population suffers from hunger, as do 20-30 percent of the people in Armenia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Mongolia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and East Timor, the ADB said.

Among the so-called U.N. Millennium Development Goals is cutting in half extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 and reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters over the same period.

The report said that Asia faces serious challenges in meeting goals linked to sanitation and maternal deaths, which remain unacceptably high in countries such as Afghanistan, Nepal and Laos.

About 1,800 out of every 100,000 Afghan women die in childbirth while more than a quarter of urban households in 13 countries still lack access to improved sanitation, the bank said.