About 800 million people worldwide live in poverty. The basic cause is lack of access to economic resources such as capital, education, land, and information. At the 2000 Millennium Summit, the world community committed itself to halving the proportion of people in the world living in extreme poverty by 2015. Achieving this goal depends crucially on the vigour of economic growth in developing countries. Economic growth is an important, but not decisive, prerequisite for the reduction of poverty.

In a market economy, the state is responsible for creating favourable conditions for private-sector development. It must also enable (potentially) employable people to have easier access to the market (education, property rights, credit, etc.) and it must compensate for unequal distribution of market results with appropriate social security measures that benefit the poor. Thus guaranteeing that the growth process has a broad impact, enabling disadvantaged segments of the population to share in it (pro-poor growth).

Against this backdrop, GIZ helps its partner countries improve basic economic conditions, build up enabling structures and networks, develop poverty-oriented and sustainable financial systems, and strengthen regional economic growth. The overriding aim is to enable poor people to work for wages or to be self-employed.

Additional, detailed information on the subject of Poverty, Growth, and Distribution is in preparation.