PHNOM PENH, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- Poverty rate in Cambodia has fallen dramatically over the last two decades, said a joint statement released by Cambodia's Ministry of Planning and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on Monday.

The statement came after a meeting between Cambodian Minister of Planning Chhay Than and UNDP Resident Representative Pauline Tamesis on Friday.

"They both agreed and affirmed that the proportion of people living below the poverty line in Cambodia is 13.5 percent which is measured based on the consumption expenditure concept using the 2014 data from the Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey," the statement said.

"They agreed that Cambodia has achieved tremendous success in poverty reduction over the last two decades," it added.

Provisional estimates suggest that the poverty rate is likely to have fallen below 10 percent, the UNDP said.

The joint statement rejected a recent report, released by the Human Development Report Office based within UNDP Headquarters in New York, which claimed that around 35 percent of all Cambodians are multidimensionally poor.

"The multidimensional poverty measures have not been adopted by the Royal Government of Cambodia as the official approach for poverty estimation in Cambodia, nor has UNDP Cambodia produced any such data," it said.