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.

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