Least developed countries (LDCs) are achieving record rates of economic expansion, but growth is failing to cut the number of people living under poverty, said a UN report released Thursday.
Economic expansion in the LDCs since 2000 has been stronger than in the 1990s, said the Least Developed Countries Report, 2008.
In 2005 and 2006, there was a further growth acceleration and the LDCs together achieved a strong growth of over 7 percent, it said.
However, because of rapid population increase and other reasons,581 million of the 767 million people in these countries still live on less than 2 dollars a day.
"The LDCs as a group are unlikely to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of reducing the incidence of poverty by half between 1990 and 2015," said the report.
"The LDCs remain very vulnerable to a growth slow-down as they are still characterized by low levels of domestic resource mobilization and investment, very weak development of manufacturing industries, high levels of commodity dependence, weak export upgrading, rising food and oil import bills and growing trade deficits," it said.
The LDCs took the hardest hit in facing the world-wide food price inflation and riots happened in some countries where prices for staple food have doubled, it noted.
"This is compressing the budget of poor families, which spend 50-80 percent of their income on food," it said.
The report urged the countries to do more in diversifying their products, expanding manufacturing industries, implementing new technologies and finding more domestic investment while reducing dependence on aid.
It also called for more efforts to create jobs for the agriculture population turning to urban areas for a livelihood.
Source:Xinhua
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