[Asia] ‘Staggering’ poverty threatens booming Asia prospects: ADB

from The Gulf Times

MANILA: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) yesterday warned that staggering poverty in Asia and the Pacific threatens the long-term economic prospects of the booming region unless governments take immediate action.

The Manila-based bank called for greater government intervention aimed at improving poor peoples’ access to basic education and primary health care services to achieve a better impact on reducing poverty.

"To sustain Asia’s success in reducing poverty, governments must improve education opportunities for the poor as this is a key driver of movements out of chronic poverty," ADB chief economist Ifzal Ali told reporters ahead of the launch of Key Indicators 2006, the bank’s annual statistical publication.

"Health-related shocks can also be catastrophic from a household’s perspective, pushing entire families into poverty," he added.

Ali said the Key Indicators publication deals with the "not-so glamorous part of Asia," with 1.9bn people still living on $2 or less a day, and 623mn living on a dollar a day or less.

He noted that the conditions of Asia’s poor "have not really changed so much over the last 30 years" amid inequalities in health and education, which remain a key challenge for governments.

Ali warned that failure to address poverty and social inequalities could threaten region’s bright economic standing as well as trigger unrest, rising criminality and political instability.

"The challenge for us is how to improve public accountability, how to improve public ethics and how to mainstream the bypassed and the marginalised," he said.

"This is a matter on which we don’t have a choice because if we don’t do these things, the part of Asia that is shining will come crashing down sooner rather than later," he added.

Ali said just throwing money at the problem does not work and stressed that "government spending must be smart," ensuring that every cent used in pro-poor interventions actually benefit the most needy.

According to the ADB report, large primary school enrolment deficiencies remain in several countries, such as Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Mongolia, Nepal and Papuan New Guinea, according to the ADB’s Key Indicators 2006.

Even in countries where significant progress has been achieved in improving access to primary schooling, "concerns remain regarding the quality of basic education and inequalities in enrolment rates," the bank said.

"In many countries, primary-school-age children from poorer households are almost three times more likely to be out of school than those from richer households," it added.

India, Pakistan, Cambodia and several Central Asian republics are also all in danger of falling short of the target to reduce the under-five child mortality rate to two-thirds of 1990 levels by 2015.

"Inequalities in health are prominent in many countries with child mortality rates for the poor being two or three times higher than those for the rich," the bank said.

The bank urged governments to carefully craft policies and programmes aimed at helping improve the lives of the poor, noting that in some countries public spending has actually been "biased in favour of the rich."

Ajay Tandon, an ADB economist, said policies aimed at reducing inequalities in health and education must be "based in careful, evidence-based analysis of the constraints at the country level."