HYDERABAD, India, May 5 (Xinhua) -- Asia is facing urgent challenges to reduce the poverty and provide a quality life for its people as two-thirds of the world's poor population are living in the region, said Haruhiko Kurada, President of Asian Development Bank here Friday.

    Despite the considerable economic growth in the past decades, Asia is still having another face of poverty and inequality, said Kurada when addressing the opening session of Board of Governors of ADB at Hyderabad, capital of south India's Andhra Pradesh.

    The number of people living on less than 1 U.S. dollar a day could fall to about 100 million by 2015 if the economic growth in Asian countries benefits poor people as well but, if growth slows and inequality increases, the number of desperately poor will still be around 350 million, he said.

    So far one in five people still has no access to safe drinking water and half of the population in Asia is without proper sanitation while more than 4 million children will die this year, never reaching their fifth birthday, according to ADB research.

    "Absolute poverty is declining. But inequality is growing. Poverty, in all its aspects, is still our region's most daunting problem," Kurada said.

    In the long term, Asia will see problems like rising unemployment, aging population, rapid urbanization and widening gap between rich and poor, which may worsen the situation, he said.

    ADB Board of Governors is expected to finalize a new medium term strategy at the ongoing annual meeting here taking elimination of poverty as top task.

    The new strategy highlights a pro-poor growth pattern in Asian countries, which means sustainable and equitable growth to narrow gaps in incomes and opportunities, and good governance with less corruption, reduction of environment cost in economic development as well as better regional cooperation and integration.

    Additional investment, particularly in infrastructure, is really required not only to sustain high economic growth but also extend basic services to the poor, Kurada said.

    But neither government nor development institutions will be able to meet the whole demand for infrastructure and the only way out is to increase private sector participation, he said.

    East Asia alone will need 1 trillion U.S. dollars in the next few years for transport, energy and utilities development.

    "ADB can bring public and private partners together to tackle this tremendous challenge," Kurada said.

    The ADB has planned to increase its investment in water supply projects to 2 billion U.S. dollars a year and that in clean energy projects to 1 billion U.S. dollars, according to ADB reports released earlier. Enditem