Dakar: Senegal is likely to reach the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, which call for reductions in rates of poverty-related indicators, the West African nation's Finance Ministry said. A study showed the country is on course to halve severe poverty in the country and to reduce childhood and malaria- related deaths by at least two-thirds, Thierno Niane, a ministry spokesman, said in the capital, Dakar, today.

There is nothing "that would give us reason to be anything other than optimistic that we will meet this goals," Niane said.

Senegal is one of only nine countries likely to meet the goals by 2015, the UN said in a report distributed in the capital.