WASHINGTON, CMC:MANY OF the poor in the Caribbean and Latin America need not suffer so much, says the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a four-decade old regional institution that aims to help reduce poverty in the region.
But according to the World Bank, life is not so bad in the Caribbean.
In a statement released on April 28, the World Bank said the Caribbean nations are holding their own with economic performances that are comparable to some regions across the globe.
The World Bank said the per capita GDP growth rate (a measure of how well a country is producing wealth) for an average Caribbean country averaged
2.8 per cent per year between 1961-2002 and the per capita GDP growth during the same
period has been around half a
percentage point higher "than in Latin America, except in the 1980s a lost decade for Latin America where the difference was nearly two percentage points".
FAVOURABLE COMPARISON
The World Bank also said "the Caribbean region, however, does not compare favourably with countries in East Asia and the long-run growth record of the Caribbean, which is broadly
similar to OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries,
compares favourably with other comparators such as the Pacific Islands and other Small States which include developed nations".
There are wide variations among countries in the region.
Those that have had the highest trend growth in the long run are St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, and Antigua and Barbuda.
"The slowest-growing countries in the region over the last four decades were Haiti, Jamaica and Guyana," the World Bank report said.
The earlier-produced IDB release had stated that millions of people in Latin America and the Caribbean could escape poverty if the region met goals set by the United Nations on reducing global poverty by 2015.
The IDB said more than 170 million people in the region could be removed from the ranks of the poor, another 120 million more people would have access to safe drinking water, nine million more children would go to school, and two million people would survive rather than die before the age of five if United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were met. The U.N. had established these goals during a special
session in 2000.
Some 189 countries set targets to cut poverty by 50 per cent by 2015 and to improve health care, sanitation, environmental protection, nutrition, and gender equality within their borders. However, with these targets not likely to be realised, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund has called for "bold and urgent" action.
"The credibility of the entire development community is at stake as never before," said World Bank President, James Wolfensohn in introducing the second annual 'Global Monitoring Report: MDGs: From Consensus to Momentum'.
"Rich countries must now
deliver on the promises they have made in terms of aid, trade and debt relief, and the developing countries especially in Sub-Saharan Africa need to aim higher and do better in terms of their own policies and governance and to make more effective use of aid."
MONITORING PROGRESS
The 2005 Global Monitoring Report is part of a five-year stocktaking effort to monitor progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
The World Bank report was recently evaluated by finance ministers, central bankers, and development ministers in Washington, D.C at the spring meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund
The document will also serve as an important input into the upcoming G8 heads of state meeting to be held in the U.K. in July and the U.N. Summit on the MDGs in September
