DEVELOPMENT: Millennium Goals Are Possible

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Nov 6 2007 (IPS) - The world’s poorest countries, even those of sub-Saharan Africa, are ‘’approaching’’ the Millennium Development Goals, the new Trade and Development Index (TDI) indicates.

But after pointing out that possibility to IPS, Supachai Panitchpakdi, the secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), clarified that ‘’performance will have to be sustained and improved in certain areas if countries are to meet the 2015 MDGs,’’ which were adopted by the international community in 2000.

"I think we must still have hope that the positive robust economic performance in the sub-Saharan economies will continue," said Supachai.

"Our forecast for next year’s global trading scene is a continuation of the trend we see this year, so that would be six consecutive years of robust growth around the world, particularly for the sub-Saharan area," he added.

"If this can continue we would come very close to the targets, although like this (TDI) report says, it&#39s not good enough to be close in certain areas," said Supachai, referring to the MDGs that were adopted by the U.N. member countries in 2000.

The eight MDGs are: halving extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women, reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters and infant mortality by two-thirds, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, adopting an environmentally sustainable development model, and building a global partnership for development. Most of them are to be achieved by 2015, based on 1990 levels.

‘’For example, in export performance, you have to be also consistent, with the same positive performance in the areas of macroeconomic discipline" as well as social welfare and institutional quality, said the head of UNCTAD.

In his presentation of the TDI – UNCTAD&#39s Developing Countries in International Trade 2007 – Trade and Development Index – Tuesday, Supachai said "That&#39s why this has been a good benchmarking exercise in that you can look to other countries with different levels of performance and benchmark yourself against that to see where you need to move further in which areas."

The first TDI was published in 2005.

The aim of the report is to guide governments, especially in countries struggling with poverty, low levels of development and sluggish economic growth, and help them identify the means of improving their performance in world trade.

The index ranks 123 countries, measuring "the positive interaction between two broad sets of measures: input-based measures such as human capital, physical infrastructure, macroeconomic stability, openness to trade and access to foreign markets; and outcome-based measures, such as trade performance and economic and social well-being.’’

Supachai said the Human Development Index prepared periodically by the UNDP (U.N. Development Programme) could be ‘’a subset of what we are doing here, because what we are doing here is trying to capture social development in different areas, not only education and health care, but everything."

The TDI shows that developing countries are still lagging behind industrialised nations in terms of human capital, physical infrastructure, financial intermediation, institutional quality and trade performance.

The United States once again leads the ranking, as "the world&#39s best combination of economic, social, regulatory, and government attributes." The UNCTAD experts clarified, however, that the index was based on 2006 figures and did not take into account recent difficulties in the U.S., associated with macroeconomic imbalance, the depreciation of the dollar, and the collapse of the housing market bubble.

Following the United States are Germany, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Japan, Sweden, France, Norway and Canada.

At the bottom of the ranking are the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger, Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau and Sudan.

The TDI highlights how far the seven main emerging economies (E7) – Brazil, India, China, South Korea, Mexico, Russia and South Africa – have climbed up on the list since 2005, with China showing the greatest increase, followed by India.

On average, the E7 countries had better TDI scores than other developing nations, and the gap between their scores and those of the 10 countries that joined the European Union in 2004 was not significant.

Among developing countries, those of East Asia and the Pacific had the highest scores, followed by those of the Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

The biggest drops from 2005 to 2006 occurred in Botswana, Jamaica, Uruguay, Cameroon and Syria, while the largest increases for developing countries were seen in Ecuador, Honduras, Iran and Oman.

In the case of Iran and Oman, the increase in scores was driven by the rise in oil prices. In general, all energy-exporting countries saw their scores go up in 2006, with the exception of Malaysia.

Because of the rise in international commodity prices, eight commodity-dependent economies – Malawi, Central African Republic, Iceland, Rwanda, Guinea-Bissau, Uganda, Ethiopia and Paraguay – had higher TDI scores in 2006 than in 2005.

UNCTAD said the index showed that a disproportionate emphasis on a limited number of policies is likely to lead to marginal results. For example, when a country exclusively focuses on economic integration and trade liberalisation, it fails to adequately address development issues.

The U.N. experts agreed that despite widespread trade openness, many of the least developed countries have failed to significantly reduce poverty, and some have even suffered setbacks in development.