U.N. warns Asia of perils of rapid growth
U.N. warns Asia of perils of rapid growth
BANGKOK (Reuter): A senior United Nations official said yesterday the dynamic economies of the Asia-Pacific region faced equally fast-growing social problems, many of them spinoffs of their success.
"I think we all know that the region has earned a reputation as the economically most dynamic region in the world," Adrianus Mooy of Indonesia, executive secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).
But the rapid growth had also brought problems, Mooy told a news conference to present ESCAP's annual survey of the region.
"Despite the fast pace of economic growth in the region, the region remains beset with many social problems," he said. "These are, among others, poverty, environmental degradation and a low level of human resource development."
He said the economies of ESCAP developing countries grew by an estimated 7.7 percent in 1994, up from 7.2 percent in 1993. The figures are based on data from 21 developing economies representing 95 percent of the region's population.
According to the survey, three quarters of the world's poor people live in the ESCAP region, which comprises 49 member nations and 10 associate members.
Mooy said the 1995 ESCAP survey focused on social security as a protection against a series of vulnerabilities that could generate or worsen poverty and deprivation.
"In the survey we noticed a wide variety of programs have been undertaken by the governments with defined benefits, but the problem that we notice is that most of these programs give benefit only to the organized sector," he said.
"They have not been able to reach the poor and more vulnerable segments of the population."
Mooy said another concern was caring for the elderly, because traditional family-based support systems had weakened along with a rapid rise in the elderly population, industrialization and urbanization.
"That means there is a need for more reliance on the formal social security systems," he said.
"The problem here is financial viability -- how to undertake these programs without creating unnecessary burdens in the form of taxation."
Mooy said the region faced other challenges as a result of rapid growth.
"Every success will also bring about new challenges," Mooy said. "I used to call these challenges the problems of success. They are different from the problem of failures."
He said the survey showed governments must still fine-tune their economic policies to ensure macroeconomic stability while they sustain or strengthen their growth.
Governments must also work on getting rid of infrastructure bottlenecks and cope with changes in the international trade regime and the increasing globalization of financial markets.