LHASA - Nearly 130,000 people in Southwest China's Tibet autonomous region were lifted out of poverty in 2013, said the region's chairman at the ongoing regional people's congress.

Losang Jamcan said the population living in poverty decreased from 585,000 to 457,000 last year, bringing the proportion of people living in poverty in the region's farming and pastoral area from 23.97 to 18.73 percent.

The region initiated more than 2,000 poverty alleviation projects in 2013, with outstanding government-subsidized loans for poverty alleviation purposes reaching over 7 billion yuan ($1.16 billion), he said at the second session of the 10th People's Congress of the Tibet Autonomous Region, which opened on Friday.

According to the national standard enforced from 2011, people with an annual income of less than 2,300 yuan are defined as poverty-stricken.

Tibet also stepped up efforts to improve educational conditions over the past year. Annual spending on education for the first time exceeded 10 billion yuan, hitting 11 billion yuan, up 14.6 year on year, Ma Shengchang, head of the region's education department, said on Saturday.