Indonesia ranks 105th in HDI index
JAKARTA (JP): The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) revealed on Monday that Indonesia was ranked 105th in its Human Development Report 1999, nine notches lower than last year's report.
The report however said that "new data and methodology make direct comparisons between this year's and last year's rankings meaningless".
The report said its Human Development Index (HDI) ranked 174 countries in terms of life expectancy, education and income. For the sixth consecutive year, Canada took the top spot.
Norway, the United States, Japan and Belgium trailed Canada. This year, Sierra Leone sat on the last rung, while Burundi, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Niger completed the bottom five, the report said.
The report said this year's HDI was based on improved life expectancy data from the United Nations Population Division, revised adult literacy data and combined gross primary, secondary and tertiary enrollment ratios from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
The report said data on purchasing power parities had been updated by the World Bank, following more comprehensive surveys undertaken by the International Comparison Programme.
"The improvements in the methodology and data affect the HDI ranks of almost all countries.
"Thus if a country ranks lower or higher on the HDI this year compared with last year, that does not necessarily mean that its state of human development has deteriorated or improved," the report said.
It added that "moreover, the HDI rank of a country also depends on the performance of other countries".
UNDP said this year's report focused on the positive and negative aspects of globalization.
"While many millions of people are being further marginalized by their lack of access to new technologies, including the Internet, growing inequalities are not inevitable."
The report recommended, among other things, stronger social policies and actions to buffer the effects of "bust and boom" economies.
It urged policy-makers "to balance their concern for profits with concern for people disenfranchised by the turmoil of the global marketplace".
"As long as globalization is dominated by economic aspects and by the spread of markets, it will put a squeeze on human development," Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, director of the Human Development Report Office, was quoted as saying in the report.
"We need a new approach to governance, one that preserves the advantages offered by global markets and competition while allowing for human, community and environmental resources that will ensure globalization works for people, not just for profits."
The report said a fifth of the world's people living in the highest income countries held 86 percent of the world gross domestic product, 82 percent of world export markets, 68 percent of foreign direct investments and 74 percent of all telephone lines.
The last five countries ranked in the report recorded about one percent in each of the categories.(byg)