The goal of halving world poverty by 2015 is likely to be met, as a result of economic growth in China and India, but the poorest nations still need more aid and better trade opportunities, this year's Human Development Report says.

The report, by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said the proportion of people living on less than one dollar a day in China fell from 33 per cent in 1990 -- the base year for the UN's Millennium goals -- to 16 per cent in 2000.

In India, which began to introduce market-based reforms more than a decade later than China, it fell from 42 per cent in 1993 to 35 per cent last year, the report said.

China and India together represent one-third of the world's population of six billion.

The report noted more modest progress in both countries towards other goals, such as halving by 2015 the proportion of people who suffer from hunger and those without access to safe drinking water, and reducing the under-five mortality rate by two-thirds.

"significant progress" has also been made in Arab states, in Latin America and in the Caribbean, the report said.

In other regions, meeting the goals "remains a huge challenge," and at current rates of progress it would take sub-saharan Africa well over a century to do so, it said.

While much of the world benefited from sustained economic growth in the past decade, 54 developing countries saw average incomes fall, the report said.

And 21 states experienced declines on the human develop-

ment index (HDI), a composite measure including life expectancy, educational enrollment, adult literacy and income per person. They include Russia and six other former soviet republics, as well as 14 African nations, among them south Africa, the country worst hit by HIV/AIDs.

"Reversals in HDI are highly unusual, as these indicators generally tend to edge up slowly over time," UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch Brown said. Only four countries declined on the index in the previous decade.