Cooperation is vital to help Asia's least developed economies
grow, a Chinese official said in Shanghai Friday.
Asia-Pacific countries need to enhance South-South and regional
cooperation to help the economies of the least developed countries
and reduce poverty, said Shen Guofang, deputy head of the Chinese
delegation to the 60th Session of the United Nations Economic and
Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP).
"Developing countries are economically complementary to each
other, they can work together pragmatically in trade, investment,
infrastructure construction and technical assistance and
exchanges," said Shen.
"Countries in the Asia-Pacific region should enrich and expand
the content and manner of South-South cooperation between them,"
said Shen.
The discrepancy between the poor countries in the South and the
rich in the North has been aggravated during the past decades as
the globalization process expands.
UN statistics show that in the past 30 years, the number of
least developed countries (LDCs) has grown from 25 to 51, with the
number of people who live in extreme poverty rising from 138
million to 307 million.
In the Asia-Pacific region, the number of these most poor
countries has more than doubled in the past three decades from six
in 1971 to 14 now.
As those countries are left behind, the targets of the
Millennium Development Goals become harder to meet, said Anwarul K.
Chowdhury, the UN under-secretary-general.
"The international community, therefore, needs to make a
determined effort to support these countries. A potential
opportunity to do that, I believe, is through enhanced regional and
South-South cooperation," said Chowdhury, who also serves as the UN
high representative for the least developed countries, landlocked
developing countries and small island developing states.
He listed a series of initiatives urged by the UN including
opening more markets to help poor countries boost their export
earnings, cancel debts, bring in increased investment and provide
technical assistance.
China, as a developing country in the region that is facing many
difficulties in its own economic development, has been working hard
to provide financial and technical assistance to these countries,
said Shen.
(China Daily April 24, 2004)