WASHINGTON, April 13 (Xinhua) -- The World Bank and the IMF on Friday said that the world have made great progress in poverty reduction, but it also warned many challenges ahead before reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).

    Due largely to strong growth in developing regions, an estimated 135 million people were lifted out of extreme poverty between 1999 and 2004, said The 2007 Global Monitoring Report released by the World Bank and the IMF.

    Meanwhile, the share of people living on less than 1 U.S. dollar a day in Sub Saharan Africa dropped by nearly 5 percentage points to 41 percent over the same period, although the absolute number of poor remained near 300 million due mainly to high population growth.

    By 2004, dollar-a-day poverty in all other developing regions had fallen, with the biggest drop in East Asia, said the report.

    But the report also warned there are regions, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia in particular, where a number of countries are seriously off track to meet the millennium goals, and many people are being left behind.

    "Many poor countries are making the difficult decisions needed to get their policies aimed at poverty reduction and growth. But they cannot accomplish this task alone. They need to have reliable, predictable and efficiently delivered aid from their partners," said Rodrigo de Rato, IMF managing director.

    This year's report focused on gender equality and the lack of opportunities for women as well as the vulnerability of fragile states. The authors stressed that MDG 3 -- the promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women -- is important for reasons of fairness and is also essential to economic well-being and the advancement of such other goals as halving poverty, achieving universal primary education, and lowering the under-five mortality rate.

    "Persistent poverty and unequal opportunities for women slow development and block attainment of the MDGs. Likewise, fragile states need urgent attention if the goals are to be met," said World Bank Group President Paul Wolfowitz.

    "We face the dual challenge of focusing on those most in need while also pushing ahead in strong-performing nations that are close to reaching their goals," he added.