The sixth press conference "Reviewing of the Twelfth-Five-Year Plan and Prosperity of the Thirteenth-Five-Year Plan", namely, the Poverty Alleviation press conference was held in the downtown on Dec18th. The leader from City Poverty Alleviation Office introduced the great achievement during the “Twelfth- Five- Year Plan” period, the  oath-taking rally and the overall plan related to poverty alleviation during the  “Thirteenth- Five- Year Plan” period.

The poverty population in Yichang, being introduced in the conference, has decreased from 60.4 million to 44.3 million by the end of 2010 and the poverty rate then has reduced from 24% to 17.6%, according to standard rural per capita net income of 2300 RMB in 2011 (same as that in 2010), consequently, the living conditions of the impoverished have been improved and the infrastructure in the poor areas has been perfected as well, further enhancing the social development.

Since the poverty alleviation oath-taking rally on August 12th, there have been 4843 people from the city and counties (namely, 1280 poverty alleviation teams) who work for those poverty-stricken villages. The City Poverty Alleviation Team, coupled with the 40,000 cadres from the counties, towns and villages, worked to know the poverty situation in every village and the work has been completed so far. After verification, there are 124,981 poor families, namely 325,860 people, living with lower income among the city. Compared with the data in 2014, the number reduced 23.59% and 26.46% respectively.

Of all other cities and autonomous prefectures in Hubei province, Yichang took the lead by working with the CADB (Agricultural Development Bank of China) for the special loans i.e. “Poverty Alleviation loan”. Up to now, 7.3 billion yuan has been officially reported, of which 65 billion has been approved and 14.9 billion yuan has been put into practice. The City Poverty Alleviation Office has signed a financial poverty alleviation cooperation agreement with the Three Gorges Rural Commercial Bank, the Three Gorges Agricultural Bank of China and the Postal Savings Bank. Besides, the office, together with the China Life Insurance Company, has launched the poverty fiscal insurance products to provide the medical assistance fund to the specific citizens and offer the serious disease insurance, accidental disability and death insurance to those who possesses the ability to work.    

According to the overall scheme of municipal committee and government, during the “Thirteenth- Five- Year Plan” period, we should ensure the registered 443,000 poor people can be canceled from the list of the poverty registrations , of which 163,600 poor families , namely, people in 243 poor villages and 5 poverty-stricken counties can be better off by the year 2018. To attain this goal, focusing on these four main poverty-stricken areas i.e. state-leveled Wuling area, province-leveled Qinba, Chahua and suburbs area, the government has made policies based on the following eight key points. i.e. income, living condition, green development, hi-tech agricultural support, medical aid, the destitution assistance, producing condition enhancement and teamwork. Accordingly, we could take the lead by strengthening organizational safeguards, ensuring poverty reduction and building a comprehensive well-off society.

(Reporter: Cao Yang)