Revisiting Devlopment Goals,

Revisiting Devlopment Goals,
how can ASEAN help?

Romeo A. Reyes
Jakarta

A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) was submitted to the UN Secretary General last month by
the UN Millennium Project, an independent advisory group
commissioned to recommend strategies for meeting the MDGs. It was
commissioned in preparation for the upcoming MDGs+5 review by the
UN General Assembly in September 2005.

The group was led by Prof. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia
University and comprised of 250 distinguished development
scholars and practitioners, including Indonesia's Mari Pangestu,
who has since joined the Cabinet of President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono as Minister of Trade.

The MDGs were adopted by Heads of State and Government at the
UN Millennium Summit in 2000. They include reducing the
proportion of people suffering from poverty and hunger by one
half, from 1990 to 2015; achieving universal primary education;
eliminating gender disparity; reducing child mortality by two
thirds and maternal mortality by three fourths; halting and
reversing the incidence HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major
diseases; and reducing by one half the proportion of people
without sustainable access to safe drinking water.

The UN Millennium Project concluded, not surprisingly, that
massive investments in physical and human (health, education,
nutrition) capital will be required to realize the MDGs. To
finance these investments, rich countries must live up to their
promise of more aid reaching 0.7 percent of their GDP by 2015,
along with more generous debt relief and more open trade. And to
make these investments work for the MDGs, poor countries in turn
must live up to their promise of good governance, including
enhancement of transparency and accountability and mobilization
of domestic resources.

The performance of Southeast Asia as a region towards
realizing the MDGs compares well with many other regions of the
world. It is assessed by the Millennium Project to be on track
with respect to poverty reduction, gender equality in school
enrollment, child mortality reduction, sanitation in urban areas,
and improvement of the lives of slum dwellers. However, it is off
track with respect to universal primary schooling, maternal
mortality reduction and many other targets.

It is not surprising that the region as a whole is assessed to
be on track with respect to poverty reduction goal given that
poverty incidence has been declining in the region over the last
two decades (save from a blip in the aftermath of the 1997-1998
economic crisis). Indeed, poverty reduction in Thailand,
Malaysia, and Indonesia has been dramatic mainly as a result of
decades of sustained growth.

However, income inequality in these countries actually
worsened during the same period, suggesting that while both the
rich and the poor benefited from growth, the former benefited
more than the latter. Because of the boom and bust pattern of
growth in the Philippines, poverty incidence has remained high at
over 30 percent, which is within the range of poverty incidence
in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

The impressive performance of Southeast Asia as a whole hides
the striking socio-economic disparities within and among
countries in the region. Based on one dollar a day poverty
threshold, UNDP's 2004 Human Development Report recorded less
than 2 percent poverty incidence in Malaysia and Thailand. The
report did not even have statistics on poverty for Brunei and
Singapore presumably because the incidence was nil.

But at the other extreme were Cambodia and Laos with poverty
incidence of 34 and 27 percent respectively. Per capita GDP of
Singapore was 24 times more than Myanmar's. In terms of Human
Development Index (HDI), Singapore was ranked 25th and Laos
135th.

Socio-economic disparities are similarly striking within
countries. In Indonesia, for instance, poverty incidence has come
down to single digit levels in Jakarta and Bali, but it remains
as high as 30 percent or more in Aceh and Maluku and 42 percent
in Papua. The same disparity can be observed in Thailand,
particularly between Bangkok and its Northeast region, and in the
Philippines, between Metropolitan Manila and the Autonomous
Region in Muslim Mindanao. It seems as if the people in Muslim
Mindanao, Papua and Northeast Thailand do not have the same right
not to be poor as the people in Manila, Jakarta and Bangkok.

ASEAN Leaders are fully aware of this disparity across and
within ASEAN Member Countries (AMCs). They see this disparity or
development gap as a constraint to deepening and broadening of
regional economic integration. But more importantly, they also
see economic integration as a means to narrow this gap when they
declared the formation of an ASEAN Economic Community, in which
there is a free flow of goods and services, investment and
skilled labor and reduced poverty and socio-economic disparities.

ASEAN Leaders have agreed to cooperate more closely to narrow
the development gap both as an end in itself and as a means to
the successful formation of ASEAN as a single market. The
Vientiane Action Programme (VAP) they adopted at their last
Summit contains measures not only to realize the three pillars of
the ASEAN Community but also to narrow the development gap as
manifested by large disparities in per capita GDP, poverty
incidence and other dimensions of human development. The VAP
provides that AMCs will determine and agree at an appropriate
forum the extent to which the development gap could be
realistically narrowed by 2010 and by 2015.

ASEAN can help realize the MDGs in Southeast Asia as a whole
and in less developed AMCs by promptly translating those
agreements and intentions into further actions. To start with,
ASEAN should now take steps towards convening "an appropriate
forum" to enable AMCs to agree on specific targets for 2010 and
beyond for narrowing the development gap in terms of per capita
GDP and other human development dimensions.

For this purpose, AMCs could use the MDGs as a framework and
the quantitative targets as benchmark. For instance, if they
could agree on the extent to which the gap in poverty incidence
could be realistically narrowed by 2015, this might imply setting
poverty reduction targets for CLMV countries over and above the
global benchmark.

In this regard, Indonesia should be commended for offering, on
the occasion of the last ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting on
Poverty and Rural Development, to share with other AMCs the
outcome of their efforts to localize MDG targets at the district
level and to link those targets to local poverty reduction action
plans and operational programs. This initiative spearheaded by
the Coordinating Ministry for People's Welfare is fully
consistent with the call from the UN Millennium Project to craft
and implement MDG-based poverty reduction strategies.

In turn, Indonesia expressed keen interest to learn from other
AMCs their experiences relating to poverty mapping, measurement
and targeting. A project for UNDP support to enable this
cooperation has been prepared by ASEAN with encouragement,
guidance and support from another prominent Indonesian who is
actively engaged in the MDGs -- Erna Witoelar, the UN Special
Ambassador for the MDGs. This is a concrete example of how AMCs
can cooperate with each other to help realize the MDGs. More of
the same can and should be pursued.

The writer is Senior Adviser, ASEAN-UNDP Partnership Facility.
The views expressed herein are personal and do not necessarily
reflect those of ASEAN, its Member Countries, or UNDP.