By Joe Cochrane in Jakarta
The Financial Times (UK)
It would take Cambodia 15 years to reduce its per capita GDP gap with Singapore by 25 per cent, and 34 years to halve it.Poor improvements in productivity are hitting the competitiveness of south-east Asia's former tigers, threatening to push the region further behind China and allowing India to catch up, according to a report released yesterday.
Between 2000 and 2005, the region's output per worker grew only 15.5 per cent, compared with 26.9 per cent in India and 63.4 per cent in China, the International Labour Organisation said in the report, prepared for the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean).
Asean's stuttering productivity is affecting its ability to narrow the development gap among its 10 members, create more and better jobs for the growing workforce, and reduce poverty. In spite of economic growth, more than half of Asean's 262m workers did not earn enough in 2006 to push their families above the poverty line.
Analysts said that given the region's economic -reliance on exports, productivity growth was crucial to the competitiveness of Asean, which includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Gyorgy Sziraczki, senior ILO economist for Asia and the Pacific, and co-author, said: "China already had a higher productivity level than Asean, and India is closing the gap. The other story is, Asean has an enormous development gap - on the one hand Singapore, on the other hand countries like Cambodia. This is an enormous gap, a reflection of the so-called development gap, and they need to close it."
It would take Cambodia 15 years to reduce its per capita GDP gap with Singapore by 25 per cent, and 34 years to halve it.
Foreign direct investment into Asean reached a record $38bn in 2005, total employment increased by 11.8 per cent since 2000, and many member countries had made huge strides in reducing poverty. However, more than one in 10 families still live in extreme poverty.
"If the working poor were more productive and thereby able to earn more, poverty would decline," the report said. "Thus, the development of productive and decent employment is essential for the sustainable reduction of poverty."
1 comment:
That is a fair report that tell
us how we are doing compared to
nations around us, and that is
what I like to work with instead
of have open-sky expectation for
our poor Khmers leaders.
Obviously things has improved, but
could be better, had we united
for the good of the country. The
fact that China is leading by
a landslide over india proved that.
China has it NPC (National People
Congress) that is well united for
the good of the country. They can
innacted any law within a flash
to fit their need, instead of
taking decades as India does.
Accordingly, I would predicted
Vietnam to overtake India within
10-15 years or so because they
are as united as China is.
Post a Comment