Asia says Asia can wipe out poverty by 2025

Asia says Asia can wipe out poverty by 2025

BANGKOK (AFP): Poverty in Asia should largely be eradicated by
2025 as economic growth transforms the lives of the 900 million
people who now survive on less a dollar a day, the Asian
Development Bank said on Wednesday.

"If developing Asia can continue with its historical trend in
economic growth, an ADB study indicates it will be largely free
of poverty by 2025," said bank vice-president Myoung-Ho Shin.

At the launch of the bank's annual Outlook report, Shin said
that after four decades of rapid development, poverty had become
Asia's main social challenge.

Nearly 70 percent of the world's poor live in the region,
including 500 million in absolute poverty, according to ADB
statistics. By comparison, Sub-Saharan Africa has about 250
million poor people.

"Fundamentally, the ADB believes that promoting economic
growth remains the best path to poverty reduction," Shin said,
adding that the bank had adopted the issue as its main
development objective.

The report slammed ineffective governments in Asia as a
leading cause of poverty, saying they had allowed corruption,
instability and violence to flourish.

Authoritarian regimes who were not accountable to their people
were "likely to be less attentive to the needs of the poor," it
said.

"Asia's success in handling its social challenge will depend
on the soundness of governance among its nations."

The bank pointed to political instability in Afghanistan and
Cambodia and internal conflicts in Sri Lanka and the Philippines
as having "a negative impact on the growth process of these
economies as well as on their ability to provide public services
to the poor."

The bank urged the international community to do more to help
the world's worst-off, whose numbers have swelled by 10 million
in Asia since financial crisis struck the region in 1997.

Moreover, they were living in the "most polluted and
environmentally degraded region in the world."

"Much needs to be done at the international level if the
global leadership is serious about eliminating the scourge of
poverty," the report said.

It recommended the international community reform global
trading so that developing nations can penetrate world markets,
and increase the flow of foreign assistance which has declined
since the early 1990s.

However, Shin struck a positive note on Asia's outlook, saying
its prospects brightened substantially in 1999 when many
economies posted large upward revisions to their growth
estimates.

Fastest

Asia still boasts the world's fastest economic growth, despite
only just emerging from three years of crisis-induced misery, the
bank said.

The region posted gross domestic product growth of 6.2 percent
in 1999, the ADB said in its annual Outlook report released here.

"The transformation of Asia from financial crisis two years
ago to the world's fastest growing region has exceeded all
expectations," the report said.

"In terms of industrial production, it took Asia less than two
years to return to the pre-crisis level of output."

Asia slumped into a painful financial crisis in 1997 as
currency collapses paralyzed corporate and banking sectors across
the region, leaving a legacy of mountainous debt.

The report put the encouraging growth figures down to a boom
in exports due primarily to a pick-up in global demand for
electronics, bringing a windfall to the Asian components
industry.

In the second half of 1999, the momentum was sustained by
expansionary policies and the implementation of structural
reforms which stimulated regional domestic demand.

Confidence and consumption was also boosted by rising regional
stock markets, encouraged by soaring growth and asset prices in
the United States and on other world bourses, the report said.

The ADB forecast the region would this year equal its 6.2
percent growth rate in 1999, supported by favorable global
sentiment and the expanding electronics industry.

South Korea led the way among countries recovering from
crisis, posting growth of 10.7 percent in 1999. Growth in other
crisis-hit nations ranged from 0.2 to 5.4 percent.

Hong Kong posted 2.9 percent growth in 1999, largely on the
back of increased government spending and rising exports of
services, the report said.

China maintained a robust growth rate of 7.9 percent,
insulated from the shocks of the global economy by capital
controls and a fixed exchange rate, and boosted by increased
public spending on infrastructure projects, the bank said.

South Asia also continued its economic emergence, posting
growth of 6.2 percent in 1999, the bank said, forecasting the
region's GDP expansion would be 4.6 percent in 2000.

It said that although India's industrial sector showed signs
of continued improvement, Pakistan's political instability and
severe floods in Bangladesh constrained progress.

Central Asia grew by 2.8 percent in 1999 but its progress
remains heavily influenced by the chaos in Russia's economy while
the Pacific region grew 4.4 percent as momentum built in public
sector reform.