Washington: There was a drop in poverty around the world, more so in developing economies, including India, which grew much faster than the developed world, registering a 6.1 per cent economic growth this year.

According to the World Bank's annual global prospects report, the fastest growing region was East Asia and the Pacific, led by China with 7.8 per cent growth and South Asia led by India with six per cent growth.

The fastest growing individual countries are China (8.8% growth), Russia (8% growth) and India (6%).

"Their performance helped power developing countries as a whole to an anticipated 6.1 per cent growth rate in 2004, an expansion without precedent over the past 30 years. "Moreover, it marks a second year of very strong growth and it may be the first time that recovery in developing countries preceded, rather than followed, recovery in high income countries," the World Bank's 'Global Outlook and the Developing Countries' report said.

Developing country economic performance has been strong since 2002, and this is projected to continue over the next two years and beyond. This pattern of high growth would in all likelihood lead to a halving of the number of poor in developing countries between 1990 and 2015, one of the key Millennium Development Goals, the report said.

The rapid growth of developing economies, mostly concentrated in East and South Asia, has produced a spectacular, if not historic fall in poverty that will enable the achievement of the poverty Millennium Development Goals on a global basis, it added.