Kuwait for anti-poverty Asian fund, donates $366m

KUWAIT CITY (AFP) - Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah on Tuesday proposed setting up a US$2 billion (S$2.4 billion) fund to fight poverty in Asia and said the Gulf state will donate US$300 million to its corpus.

"In a bid to fight poverty and improve the standard of living... I propose an initiative to set up a US$2 billion programme," Sheikh Sabah said as he opened the first Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD) summit.

"In this context, I am pleased to announce that Kuwait will contribute US$300 million to the fund."

Sheikh Sabah proposed that a pan-Asian development agency, like the Asian Development Bank, manages the programme that will finance development projects in the least developed Asian nations.