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Economic growth alone is not enough to reduce rural poverty and countries such as India, Pakistan and the Philippines, need to speed up rural transformation that has been slow so far, says a new report by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). “The speed of rural transformation is positively correlated with the extent of poverty reduction Vietnam, China and Indonesia had faster rural transformation and faster rural poverty reduction. On the other side, the Philippines, Pakistan and India had slower rural transformation with slower annual poverty reduction,” said IFAD’s Rural Development Report 2016, calling upon governments to put in place targeted policies and investments that focus on agricultural development that is sustainable, raises wages and creates off-farm jobs in rural areas. The report said that countries that had achieved fast structural and rural transformation also dramatically reduced poverty, which across the Asia Pacific region fell from 71 per cent in 1981 to 15 per cent in 2011.