ADB urges governments to promote domestic demand

To help meet the 2015 deadline for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), East and Southeast Asian governments must promote domestic demand, improve basic services, and expand social safety nets for women, the unemployed, and other vulnerable groups. "Promoting domestic demand is necessary for ensuring sustainable growth in the region, given the declining demand for Asian exports," Guanghua Wan, senior poverty reduction specialist of the Asian Development Bank, said in an email to GMANews.TV on Tuesday. He explained that "growth is the most important driver for MDG progress. Expanding domestic demand helps sustain growth, which in turn helps promote MDGs" and does not necessarily lead to higher deficits. The ADB observes that East and Southeast Asia governments have achieved lower poverty and illiteracy rates but they still need to speed up health and environment programs to meet the MDGs. “East and Southeast Asia have already achieved 11 of the 21 MDG indicators but governments must step up efforts on maternal health, child mortality, and environmental sustainability, including forest cover, to achieve all MDGs by the target date," says Ursula Schaefer-Preuss, Vice-President for Knowledge Management of the ADB. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the UN Millennium Summit, where 189 heads of state agreed on the MDGs that include halving extreme poverty, providing universal primary education, improving gender equity, and halting the spread of HIV/AIDS, all by 2015. The ADB, ADB Institute, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), and Shanghai Jiaotong University held a joint forum in Shanghai, China on Tuesday to assess the region’s progress on MDGs, the bank said in a statement. Forum participants found that widening gaps in income and development between countries, regions within countries, and urban and rural communities, are holding back progress on MDGs. “The consequences of these disparities ― further aggravated by the uncertain prospect of the global economy and combined effects of the global food, climate, energy, and economic crises ― are that improvements in the lives of the poorest are happening at an unacceptably slow pace and in some cases, hard fought gains are being eroded," said Nicholas Rosellini, UNDP deputy regional director for Asia and the Pacific. The forum also determined the need for greater regional cooperation in food trade as well as monetary and financial ties. Recommendations from the forum will be brought to the UN MDG Summit in September in New York where the tripartite partnership of ADB, UNDP, and UNESCAP will launch the 2010 Regional MDG Report and present Asia’s voice on the goals. “As we all know, the performance of the region in achieving the MDGs has been rather mixed with many countries finding difficult challenges in meeting the targets by 2015. In that context, the region could harness its vast financial resources to close the gaps," said Nagesh Kumar, director of UNESCAP macroeconomic policy and development division. –VVP/VS, GMANews.TV