India is home to the largest number of hungry people in the world, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Thursday.

According to the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report, India is home to 233 million hungry people, Minister of State for Planning S B Mookherjee said in a written reply.

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to 183 million hungry people while China comes next with 119 million.

The rest of East Asia has 74 million hungry people, Latin America 55 million and the Arab states 32 million.

"In South Asia one person in every four goes hungry, and in Sub-Saharan Africa this share is as high as one in three," he said.

Mookherjee said the report recognises that poverty has been dramatically reduced in India.

"It has commended India for making serious efforts towards achieving economic growth and reduction of poverty in the country, which would contribute significantly, in turn, to achieve the first Millennium Development Goal of reducing by half the proportion of people living in extreme poverty in the world by 2015," he added.

Minister of State for Food and Public Distribution V Sreenivasa Prasad said action has been in hand to ensure food security for all and to reform and improve the PDS for the benefit of the poorest of the poor in rural and urban areas.