Despite progress in recent years, both poor and rich countries need to do much more if the international community is to meet its commitment of halving global poverty in all the world’s regions by 2015, says the new World Bank report, World Development Indicators 2002.

At the United Nations International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, world leaders confirmed their support for the goals of the UN Millennium Declaration, which called for reducing world poverty in all its forms. Current estimates say that brisk economic growth in China and India will enable the world to reach the overall goal of halving global poverty by 2015. But the data in the new study - which covers all eight of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - say progress is uneven and that too many regions and countries are falling far short of the goals.

Still, more advances are possible if poor countries improve policies and governance and rich countries expand trade access and increase foreign aid. Policies in developing countries have been improving during the last 15 or 20 years. Rich countries have eased barriers to poor country exports during the last decade but obstacles remain high, particularly in agriculture and textiles. And in the run up to Monterrey, the United States and European Union pledged to increase development assistance significantly during the next few years.

“The past decade has been a good one for opening up markets to goods from poor countries and a bad one for increasing foreign aid flows,” said Nicholas Stern, the World Bank’s Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President for Development Economics. “Monterrey showed that we have begun to turn the corner on aid. But in the decade ahead, we must push vigorously on trade. We know development can work, yet 1.2 billion people still live on less than $1 a day. The challenge of meeting the Millennium Development Goals reminds us all that we can and must do better.”

The MDGs aim to reduce income poverty by 2015 and spur significant improvements in education, gender equality, health care, and in overcoming hunger and environmental degradation. The new study shows that for the poorest countries, many of the goals are far out of reach while even in better-off countries, there may be regions or other sub-groups that lag far behind.

The most-quoted goal calls for reducing the proportion of people living on less than $1 a day to half the 1990 level by 2015, from one in every third person in the developing world to one in every six. The new report shows that reaching that goal is possible in most developing regions if growth in per capita income accelerates to an average of 3.6 per cent per year. That growth would be nearly twice the rate achieved over the last decade, but the experience of some countries shows that it is possible. China averaged almost 9 percent annual growth in GDP per capita in the 1980s and 1990s. Vietnam saw growth of almost 6 percent in the 1990s, which reduced poverty by more than a third between 1993 and 1998. And in India, faster growth in the last decade helped to reduce substantially the proportion of people living in poverty.

Each goal is important by itself, but they should also be viewed together —they are mutually reinforcing. Better basic health care and nutrition increases learning and productivity. And better education, especially for women, leads to better health outcomes. The living of many poor people is damaged by environmental degradation. Reducing poverty gives people more resources to pursue better education and health care and a cleaner environment.

“This study is not a final verdict on how countries will perform but it is a warning that many are not on track to reach many of the goals,” said Shanta Devarajan, Chief Economist of the World Bank’s Human Development Network. “Just because a country is doing well economically does not mean it is in reach of the Millennium Development Goals. Countries need to work to ensure that poor people are included in the benefits of development.

Poor people in developing countries urgently need access to quality health care services and education to enable them to fulfil their potential. Now is the time to take action to speed up progress, not 5 to 10 years from now. This year’s World Development Indicators marks the 25th edition. The reports are based on information from national statistics agencies. Shaida Badiee, Director of the Bank’s Development Data Group, called on nations to improve their data reporting so they and the international community are well informed of the challenges and successes of development and can respond.

“We must measure results,” said Badiee. “We need good statistics to understand who is benefiting and who is left out. In poor countries, statistical agencies are often under-funded and their work under-used. They need training, equipment, and a clear mandate from their governments to produce better, more reliable, and more timely statistics. But the work does not stop there. The international community also plays a role by helping to develop capacity, establishing standards, sharing knowledge, and coordinating the collection and dissemination of international statistics.”

The new report shows that prospects of reaching the Millennium Development Goals vary by region. Fast-growing East Asia could reach the poverty goals, with the number of people living in extreme poverty expected to drop by almost 80 per cent. Sub-Saharan Africa, meanwhile, remains the biggest concern.

Overall, East Asia and the Pacific remains a promising region for reaching the MDGs on time. In 1999, there were about 260 million people living on less than $1 a day. That is expected to drop to 59 million in 2015. Benefiting from high economic growth and the highest levels of savings of all the regions in the world (37 per cent of GDP in 2000), the region also fares well in gender equality in school and child mortality. On the health side, progress is lagging behind achievements in educational attainments and poverty headcounts and more effort will be needed to achieve the objectives.

Eastern Europe and Central Asia’s social indicators at the beginning of the transition were similar to those of Western Europe. Recent data suggest that in several countries the stress of transition has resulted in reversals in those indicators. Of particular concern are countries where infant mortality rates may be rising, school completion rates are falling and poverty is continuing to rise. While much of Central and Eastern Europe is experiencing robust growth and declining poverty, the Balkans and much of the CIS are confronting deteriorating social circumstances and lower growth.

Latin America and the Caribbean is expected to reduce the number of poor in the region from 77 million in 1999 to 60 million by 2015 if it can maintain a per capita growth rate of 3.6 per cent. Regional growth has declined since 1980s and GDP per capita has grown by only 1.7 per cent a year since 1990. Although it is a comparatively wealthy region, it also includes two very poor countries (Haiti and Nicaragua) and three of the world’s 10 most severely indebted countries (Argentina, Brazil and Mexico), and it suffers from a relatively low overall rates of savings (20 per cent of GDP). Yet the region has the potential to reach many of the MDGs. Its indicators are positive in most categories, most notably gender equality in school. Latin America and the Caribbean is the only region in the world where the literacy rate is higher among girls than boys. Child malnutrition remains a problem in the low-income countries and in poorer regions of some middle-income countries.

South Asia has experienced rapid growth, averaging 5.9 percent a year since 1990, which has helped to reduce poverty substantially. Strong growth in India helped to raise the regional average growth rate in the 1990s; Bangladesh and Sri Lanka also experienced good growth. The ability of the region, especially India, to sustain average growth of 5-6 percent a year will be critical to achieving the poverty reduction targets for 2015. The region has made gains in reducing mortality in children under five since 1990, especially in Bangladesh. At the same time, little progress has been made in reducing malnutrition; today, nearly half of all children under the age of five are malnourished. The resurgence of tuberculosis and the threat of HIV/AIDS are also a cause for concern.

In Sub-Saharan Africa the number of poor is expected to rise from 300 million in 1999 to 345 million people by 2015. To halve poverty by 2015, African economies will need to grow at 7 percent a year on average (about 5 per cent in per capita terms), more than twice as fast as the 3.1 per cent growth in 2000. Struggling with high rates of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, Africa remains highly dependent on commodity exports and is still experiencing political and economic instability. Africa is the region with the lowest average primary school completion rates but the encouraging news is that some countries, for example Guinea and Eritrea, have made impressive progress after starting from very low levels.

Progress on Millennium Development Goals :Just how many countries reach the Millennium Development Goals depends on whether the progress in the past decade can be sustained or sped up in countries falling behind.

A look at the eight MDGs shows mixed results :

* Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger: The goal is to reduce the proportion of people living on less than $1 a day to half the 1990 level by 2015 - from 29 percent of all people in low-and middle-income countries to 14.5 per cent. Bank projections show that it is possible to achieve the goal in most regions if growth in per capita income accelerates to an average of 3.6 percent a year - nearly twice the rate of the last decade.

* Achieve primary universal education: There have been small improvements in all regions in the last decade but progress overall has been too slow to reach the goal by 2015. In 1999, there were still 120 million primary-school-age children not in school, 53 percent of them girls and 74 per cent living in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

* Promote gender equality and empower women: Equal access to education is a key step toward greater gender equality but it is not the only one. Progress has been good in some regions, but even if this goal is reached, the world will still fall short of gender equality. Differences persist in legal rights, labour market opportunities, and ability to take part in public life and development decision-making. * Reduce child mortality: Rapid improvements before 1990 gave hope that mortality rates of children under five could be cut by two-thirds in the following 25 years. But progress slowed almost everywhere in the 1990s, and in parts of Africa infant and child mortality rates rose.

Only 37 developing countries are making fast enough progress to meet

the goal, while vaccination rates for children have declined.

* Improve maternal health: In 1995, more than 500,000 women died from complications of pregnancy and childbirth, most of them in developing countries, with half in Africa. In Rwanda, there were more than 2,000 deaths for every 100,000 live births, compared to two per 100,000 in Greece. The lack of current data on maternal deaths limits monitoring of trends over time. The Bank study says broader government action is often needed to improve policies that affect the lives of women and the capacity of the health system.

* Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases: With an estimated 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS and 20 million deaths since the disease was first identified, AIDS poses an unprecedented public health, economic, and social challenge. Malaria is endemic in more than 100 countries and territories and affects some 300 million people each year. TB, meanwhile, is the main cause of deaths from a single infectious agent among adults in developing countries, and has grown rapidly in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

* Ensure environmental sustainability: Safe water supplies are important for improving health, especially in children, but the report notes that in many regions, the share of the population with access to an improved water source has declined since 1990. The loss of more than 900,000 square kilometres of forests over the decade also points to unsustainable use of natural resources. Greater understanding of how environmental changes affect poor people is needed to point the way to truly sustainable development.

* Build a global partnership for development: The building blocks of the new partnership, confirmed at the Monterrey Conference on financing for development, are stronger policies and good governance in developing countries; a more open and equitable global trading system; and increased resources through aid and debt reduction for countries working to meet their development goals.