By DPA
Manila : The Asia-Pacific region is on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which include reducing poverty by half by 2015, according to a progress report the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the United Nations released Monday.
But the report noted that there is uneven progress within countries and many of the less developed economies in the region have been slow in achieving the UN-set targets, with some not making any progress at all.
According to the report, “The Millennium Development Goals: Progress in Asia and the Pacific 2007,” Asia-Pacific countries were gaining headway in addressing extreme poverty, especially “income poverty.”
“Income poverty is one of the region’s success stories,” the report said. “Based on a 1-dollar-a-day measure, the region as a whole is on track, due in part to rapid economic growth in many countries.”
It cited China, which reduced extreme poverty to one in 10 persons today from one in three persons in 1990, and the Philippines, which cut down poverty rate to 14.8 per cent in 2003 from 19.8 per cent in 1991.
The report noted that the worst failures of Asia-Pacific countries lie in addressing the issues of child mortality, nutrition, improving maternal health and providing safe drinking water and sanitation facilities.
“The Asia and Pacific region accounts for 65 per cent of the world’s underweight children, and many Asian countries exceed prevalence rates of sub-Saharan Africa,” the report said.
“The region is moving too slowly to reduce child mortality,” it added. “It still has 60 deaths per thousand live births – nearly double that of Latin America and the Caribbean.”
The report urged fast-rising economies in the region to help less developed countries achieve the goals.
“We are at the half-way mark towards the target date of 2015 and have a historic opportunity to change the lives of millions living in abject poverty,” Shiladitya Chatterjee, chief of the ADB poverty unit, said.
“The 2007 MDG Update gives us an indication of what the region stands to gain if we intensify our efforts to meet the MDGs,” Haishan Fu, chief of UN-ESCAP statistics development section, said. “We need to focus on those economies that are moving slowly or not making any progress.”
The report noted that if the countries in the region which are now off track – either slowly or regressing – were abled to speed up and meet the MDGs by 2015, some 196 million people will be lifted out of grinding poverty.
It added that if the targets were met, 23 million more children would no longer suffer from hunger and nearly 1 million children would survive beyond their fifth birthday.
The MDGs, which range from halving extreme poverty to reducing the spread of HIV-AIDS and providing access to clean drinking water and sanitation facilities by 2015, formed a blueprint agreed upon by the world’s nations and development institutions in 2000.