Southeast Asia takes the lead in the fight against hunger and poverty, according to a report announced by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations.

FAO’s State of Food Insecurity 2013 (SOFI 2013) issued on October 1 highlighted that t he most rapid progress was seen in Southeast Asia, where the proportion of hungry people has dropped from 31.1 percent to 10.7 percent since 1990.

Over the two past decades, higher economic growth in developing countries has improved people’s income and access to food. In addition, an increase in agricultural productivity and more private and public investments in agriculture have made the supply of food higher than the population growth, according to the report.

The report also shows that 842 million people around the world or one eights of the global population did not have enough food for an active and healthy life.

Africa remains the region with the highest prevalence of undernourishment. Sub-Saharan Africa is currently performing the worst on the hunger scale, accounting for 24.8 percent of the population there.

Meanwhile Western and Southern Asia and Northern Africa also show slow progress.

However, FAO forecasts that the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) towards halving undernourished people in developing countries by 2015.-VNA