Peru's poverty rate fell just under two percentage points to 23.9 percent in 2013 from the prior year, as a slowing economy impeded President Ollanta Humala's goal of halving the country's poverty rate to 15 percent by 2016. Some 490,000 Peruvians were lifted out of poverty in 2013, the majority in rural areas, the government statistics agency said on Friday. That leaves around 7.3 million poor in the population of nearly 40 million.

When he took office, Humala pledged to cut the poverty rate by the end of his term in July 2016 but a decelerating economy has crimped those plans. Growth in 2013 was 5.6 percent, compared to 6.3 percent in 2012.

Copyright Reuters, 2014