Dire plight of least developed countries

Press, 24 June 1981, Page 20

Dire plight of least developed countries

By

ALASTAIR MATHESON

in Addis Ababa

Many of the world's 30 poorest countries are becoming poorer, - with little hope of rescuing their 267 million people from dire need. The United Nations classifies the 30 as Least Developed. Countries or L.D.C.s, and they are sometimes referred to as the Fourth World. Twenty are in Africa, six in Asia and two in the Middle East. The others are Haiti in the Caribbean and Samoa in the Pacific. A United Nations conference to consider their plight will take place next September in Paris. Meanwhile a series of regional meetings is being held around the world to work out the needs of the L.D.C.s enabling the Paris conference to set an aid target which richer nations will be asked to fund.

The problems of the poorest African countries are being discussed in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, itself one of the world's poorest nations. Information presented to this meeting has revealed that of the 30 L.D.C.s, at least 10. are

sufferirig negative growth. The 10 arc in Africa, with one exception — the Democratic Republic of Yemen, which has the. largest negative rate of minus 3 per cent. In terms of. gross national product per head. Laos is rated as the world's poorest countrv, with an average income of $B3 a year. The other L.D.C.s have per capita incomes of less than $5OO a year, except for Botswana ($632) and Samoa ($520). United Nations officials in Addis Ababa explain that the cost of fuel, food and imported goods needed for development projects has been rising steeply while exports from the Fourth World are either fetching the same prices as a decade ago or are falling in value. The gap between the L.D.C.s and those developing countries which are not oil producers was calculated at two times in the late 19605. Now it is five times, and projections for 1990 indicate an even wider gap. Long-term pledges for

L.D.C.s have already been made by some Western donor States in response to an appeal at the last UNCTAD conference in Manila in 1979. These pledges of concessional assistance to be spread over the present decade still fall far short of what may be required, but show the Scandinavian countries at the top of the generosity list, followed by the Netherlands — all giving above 2 per cent of their respective GNPs.

Belgium, Canada. Britain, West Germany, France and Switzerland are also all above the average pledge, which is only 0.057 per cent of GNP. while Japan and the United States are well below, at a mere 0.031 per cent and 0.03 per cent respectively. No contributions have been pledged by any countries of the Soviet bloc. United Nations sources in Addis Ababa say the Communist world’s justification from abstaining from this international rescue is that L.D.C.s are all “victims of colonialist exploitation” • for which they disclaim any re-

sponsibility. (The poorest of the L.D.C.S, Laos, is suffering chiefly from a war-ravaged countryside where 40 per cent of the arable land has been destroyed.) Like Laos, most of the other "poorest of the poor" are landlocked, with economies depend-

ent on agriculture. Laos, Bhutan and Niger have only 1 per cent of children of secondaryschool age attending school. Burundi. Tanzania and South Yemen have fewer than two doctors per 100.000 population. Six more States are seeking admission to the group of

Least Developed Countries. They are Djibouti. Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Sao Tome, the Seychelles and Tonga. All plead that their economies are in such a grave state that they merit special assistance.—Copyright, London Observer Service.