October 12, 2000
Two thirds of the 48 countries designated by the United Nations as the least developed in the world lost ground to other developing and low-income countries in the 1990s, said the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in a report issued here Thursday. In its Least Developed Countries 2000 Report, the UNCTAD warned that those countries will remain "pockets of poverty" in the global economy unless significant improvements are made in international development cooperation: encompassing aid and debt relief policies, private capital flows and the international trade regime.
They are categorized as the least developed countries (LDCs) because of their poverty, weak human resources and low level of economic diversification. Most of the 614 million people who live in the LDCs, just over one tenth of the world's entire population, survive on less than two U.S. dollars a day. Almost a quarter of the LDCs are "caught in a downward spiral in which economic regress, social stress and violent conflict mutually reinforce each other," said UNCTAD Secretary-General Rubens Ricupero in a foreword to the report.
According to the report, the drop in private capital inflows, down by 45 percent since 1990, and official development assistance, down by 30 percent since 1990, combined with the "unsustainable" external debt of two thirds of the LDCs, contribute to the bleak picture. However, the U.N. report also noted the bright part of the mixed picture. The LDCs' economies as a whole grew faster in the 1990s than in the 1980s. In 15 LDCs, including seven in Asia, GDP per capita growth exceeded 2 percent a year during 1990-1998. But there are 22 LDCs which were stagnant or in economic regress. In 11 of these, all of which experienced serious armed conflicts and internal instability during the 1990s, the real GDP per capita has been declining by more than 3 percent annually.
Overall, 32 LDCs have either fallen relatively behind the other developing countries in terms of per capita income, or experienced absolute deterioration in living standards between 1990 and 1998, the UNCTAD said.
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