PARIS (Reuters) - International donors promised $2.104 billion to finance Mauritania's development plan at a conference in Paris this week, the World Bank said in a statement on Thursday.
The two-day meeting, which finished on Wednesday, was attended by over 40 delegations representing Mauritania's development partners and international institutions.
Countries present included China, the United States, Germany, France and Qatar.
"On the basis of its financing needs the partners undertook to provide external assistance valued at $2.104 billion to finance Mauritania's 2008-2010 development plan," the World Bank said in a statement.
The economy of the Saharan Islamic state, which straddles Arab and black Africa, counts fish, livestock, and iron ore among its main products. It also has offshore oil reserves that promise to revolutionise the economy.
According to a World Food Programme study 165,000 people -- or 9 percent of the population -- depend on humanitarian assistance to survive through the toughest months of the year.
The government told the donors it would step up its efforts to cut poverty.
"The government promised to continue and intensify its efforts to reduce poverty and to accelerate reforms to meet the millenium development goals and to maintain and prudent budgetary and monetary policy," the statement said.
"It also undertook, in the framework of agreements signed with the IMF, to keep an eye on the sustainability of its external debt."
The donors encouraged the government to "open up the transparency of the management of public funds, to reinforce the quality of public spending in order to benefit the majority of Mauritanian citizens."
They also welcomed measures taken by the new government "in terms of eradicating the aftereffects of slavery and the return of Mauritanian refugees to establish national unity".
In August Mauritania's parliament passed a law making slavery a criminal offence punishable by up to 10 years in prison after years of lobbying by rights groups.
Although banned by decree since 1981, rights groups said hundreds of thousands of Mauritanians were still enslaved, the highest proportions in a population anywhere in the world.