Asia on target for 2015 development goals: ADB

Asia on target for 2015 development goals: ADB

MANILA (Reuters): Asia's strong underlying growth rates, easing poverty levels and slower population growth over the past decade augur well for meeting development goals set for 2015, the Asian Development Bank said in a report on Thursday.

The goals include halving the incidence of extreme poverty, reducing infant and child mortality by two thirds, and attaining 100 percent primary school enrollment.

"Overall, Asia is poised to achieve the targets of the international development goals by 2015," ADB Vice-President Myoung-Ho Shin said.

In its annual statistics report for Asia and the Pacific, launched in Singapore, the ADB said that with the exception of 1998 during the Asian crisis, the region's GDP grew at over six percent a year in the 1990s, the highest rate in the world.

That far outstripped the growth of other developing regions, with Latin America growing at an average 3.4 percent and sub- Saharan Africa at 2.4 percent.

Most countries in Asia/Pacific shared in the rising GDP during the decade, with the exception of Central Asia which posted negative growth as nations there shifted from central planning to market economies, the report said.

Population pressures eased, with the growth rate for Asia now only 1.45 percent per annum, led by the success of China's policies in lowering fertility, the report said.

India, the second most populous country in the world, saw its population growth rate slow to 1.7 percent per annum, from an average of 2.1 percent in the previous decade.

The ADB said the slowing population growth trend was due in part to "rising levels of education, increased female labor participation, and greater access to and use of contraception."

Poverty also showed a declining trend with the rate falling from around 29 percent in the 1980s to about 24 percent in the 1990s -- some 600 million people -- the ADB said.

While the ADB said these trends were encouraging, it also highlighted others that were causes for concern.

These included a widening disparity between the economic performances of South and Central Asia against the other faster- growing countries in the region.

It also said rapid urbanization was putting an increasing strain on infrastructure, while a decline in the region's labor force and an aging population raised concerns about the provision of health care, pensions and other social safety nets.

The report noted that the best-performing economies in the region had sound macro-economic policies and export-led strategies, and continued to attract foreign direct investment.

These include China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore as well as Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand in Southeast Asia.

Conversely countries that had not taken the export-led growth path, principally those in South Asia, have recorded lower GDP increases, limited progress in poverty reduction and only modest improvements in living standards over the past decade.

The ADB noted that with a growing middle class and emergence of consumerism, as well as high savings rates, the region's markets promised significant expansion, while export-led economies would continue to be attractive to foreign investors.