Washington – East Timor, the world's youngest nation, was due to join the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank on Tuesday, the lending institutions said.

At a Washington ceremony, Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri was scheduled to sign the Articles of Agreement for the Asian country of 800,000 people to join the twin organizations.

East Timor became a sovereign state, the Democratic Republic of East Timor, on May 20 after four centuries of Portuguese colonial rule and 24 years of Indonesian occupation.

Jakarta invaded the territory in 1975 and annexed it the following year. During an occupation marked by bloodshed, disease and starvation, some 200,000 people were killed.

An overwhelming vote for independence in a 1999 UN-organized ballot sparked an orgy of violence by pro-Jakarta militias on the territory that borders Indonesian West Timor. After international peacekeepers intervened, Jakarta relinquished East Timor to the United Nations in October of the same year.

East Timor will have access to more than 440 million dollars pledged by over 25 nations over three years for programmes to fight poverty and promote economic growth, the World Bank said in May.

The UN Development Programme rates East Timor as among the poorest countries, on par with Angola, Bangladesh and Haiti.

East Timor's per capita income is 478 dollars, and nearly half the population survives on less than 55 cents a day, says the UNDP. More than half of all adults are illiterate, over half of infants are underweight and the average life expectancy is 57 years.