A/HRC/44/40/Add.3 annually from 1970 to 2012, with the bottom 40 percent of income earners enjoying the highest growth. But it remains all the more significant that despite such accomplishments, a considerable proportion of the country still lives in poverty. Comments from the Government of Malaysia: • Malaysia commends the SR’s acknowledgement that Malaysia has made immense progress on poverty alleviation although works on it are still in progress. • Development policies, strategies and initiatives on poverty alleviation have also increase the standard of living and wellbeing of Malaysians in term of health, education, housing and basic infrastructure and services such clean water and electricity. At the same period, household income had increased from RM264 to RM6,958 from 1970 to 2016. Paragraph 15 The Government now has a unique opportunity to become a true champion of poverty reduction by improving the lives of many facing hardship and realizing the poverty eradication ambitions of the New Economic Policy. The Special Rapporteur met with many politicians and government officials who were clearly dedicated to improving the well-being of the poorest people and marginalized groups. The Government should capitalize on this goodwill by correcting the narrative around poverty, providing those living in poverty with the support they need, and ensuring that Malaysia’s economic growth is truly inclusive and benefits the entire population. Comments from the Government of Malaysia: • Malaysia has continuously developed its development policies through five year development plan and long term planning. The implementation of New Economic Policy (NEP), 1970-1990 was followed by Vision 2020, 1991-2020. As a continuous development for policies, the Government in October 2019 launched Shared Prosperity Vision 2030, 20212030. The SPV is a blueprint for socioeconomic development with main objectives development for all, reducing inequalities and for Malaysia to become inclusive, united and prosperous nation. II. Poverty measurement Paragraph 16 A national poverty measure should enable a sober, contextualized assessment of the level and nature of poverty. But in Malaysia it has become a way for successive governments to declare victory over poverty without having actually achieved it. Malaysia’s national poverty line bears no relationship to the cost of living, household incomes, or realities on the ground. It was meaningful in 1970, but real household income has increased fivefold since then, and Malaysia has gone from a “low-income” to an “upper middle income” country in that time. Apart from being inconsistent with almost all independent analysis, the artificially low measure has discouraged research on poverty and distorted the targeting of existing social support programs. Comments from the Government of Malaysia: • Malaysia practices internationally accepted poverty measurement from absolute, relative and multidimensional poverty dimensions. • Absolute poverty measurement measures the basic needs of food and non-food requirements which is converted to monetary term which is known as Poverty Line Income (PLI). The methodology is derived from the Canberra Handbook UN Statistical Guideline. Based on this methodology, the incidence of poverty has reduced significantly from 49.3% in 1970 to 0.4% in 2016. • Based on the World Bank International and United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) international poverty line at USD1.90 a day, the incidence of absolute poverty in Malaysia almost eradicated. Thus, both national poverty line and the World Bank figures 8