E/CN.4/1999/48 page 16 D. Transfer of resources 63. The fight against poverty implies transfer of resources. In this context, it is important for donor countries urgently to reverse the decline in official development assistance to developing countries, which amounted to just 0.25 per cent of the gross domestic product in 1996, the lowest figure recorded in the last 50 years. 64. The anti-poverty effort will require a transfer of resources to the social sectors. Currently, the overall ratio is relatively low in developing countries: partial data suggest that about 13 per cent of national budgets are being spent on basic services. According to UNDP, the additional cost of combating poverty is about US$ 40 billion a year over the 10 years to 2005, including basic education for all ($6 billion; $7 billion according to UNICEF figures), basic health and nutrition ($13 billion), reproductive health and family planning ($12 billion), and low-cost water supply and sanitation ($9 billion). In a world economy of $25 trillion, poverty eradication is affordable. Most of the resources can come from restructuring existing budgets. For universal access to basic social services, about $30 billion could come from national budgets and perhaps $10 billion from international aid. 65. Moreover, the cost of closing the gap between the annual income of poor people and the minimum income at which they would no longer be in extreme poverty amounts to another $40 billion a year. So that to provide universal access to basic social services and transfers to alleviate income poverty would cost roughly $80 billion. That is less than 0.5 per cent of global income and less than the combined net worth of the seven richest men in the world. Lack of political commitment, not financial resources, is the real obstacle to poverty eradication. 66. In this regard, the General Assembly, in resolution 52/193, called upon developed countries to commit the agreed target of 0.7 per cent of their gross national product for overall development assistance and, within that target, to earmark 0.15 to 0.20 per cent of GNP for the least developed countries. Moreover, the Assembly called upon all donors to give high priority to the eradication of poverty in their assistance budgets and programmes, on both bilateral and multilateral basis. As the Secretary-General noted in his report on the implementation of the first United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty, so far, only Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have met or exceeded the 0.7 per cent target (A/53/329, para. 50). 67. In the same resolution, the Assembly called upon developed and developing countries to allocate 20 per cent of their official development assistance, and 20 per cent of the national budget, respectively, to basic social programmes. It also reaffirmed that promoting access for all to basic social services was essential for sustainable development and should be an integral part of any strategy to overcome poverty. The 20/20 Initiative should include basic education, primary health care, including reproductive health and population programmes, nutrition programmes and safe drinking water and sanitation, as well as the institutional capacity for delivering those services.