GENEVA, July 20: Snowballing urbanisation and economic growth in the world's poorest nations are creating too few opportunities for their citizens, leaving them vulnerable in the face of competitive and increasingly open world markets, a UN study warned on Thursday.The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said that unless the world's 50 least developed countries (LDCs), three-quarters of which are in Africa, were able to meet the job-creation challenge, then there would be increased pressure for migration to industrialised nations.

Without sustained efforts to build up productivity in the LDCs, there would also be an increased risk of humanitarian crises and even civil conflict, UNCTAD said.

Agriculture accounted for 70 per cent of the labour force in LDCs in 2000-2003, but overall, the decade 2000-2010 will be the first in which the economically active non-farming population is forecast to grow faster than its rural counterpart.

Most LDCs have simply been unable to generate enough productive, off-farm jobs to escape the poverty trap, said UNCTAD.

“There is a need to translate growth into jobs and poverty reduction,” said UNCTAD chief Supachai Panitchpakdi.

The economies of the LDCs, most of which have undertaken rapid trade liberalisation, grew by an average of 5.9 per cent in 2004, the year for which the most recent data is available, said UNCTAD. The rate was the highest in two decades.

The increase was associated with a doubling of aid from rich countries between 1999 and 2004.

Also crucial were high demand for the LDCs oil and other natural resources, record merchandise exports in 2004 of $57 billion -- a near-fivefold increase on the previous year -- and a record 10.7 billion in private foreign investment. But progress was uneven.

Four oil-exporting LDCs -- Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Sudan and Yemen -- accounted for more than half of the export increase. The four countries, plus the oil nations of Chad and Mauritania, also drew 70 per cent of foreign investment, UNCTAD noted.

Such capital still remained concentrated on resource extraction, which is not known for creating a “virtuous circle” of widening economic activity and employment, the agency said.

Other LDCs, notably Bangladesh, Gambia and Senegal, did well with exports of manufactured items, such as textiles.

But countries including Niger and the Central African Republic achieved growth of less than one per cent, while the economy of violence- and disaster-ravaged Haiti shrank by 3.8 per cent. —AFP