'The world is in danger of missing MDG targets'

Prime Minister of Jamaica Bruce Golding has warned that the world is in danger of failing to meet targets set at the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) summit a decade ago.

Addressing the 65th Session of the UN General Assembly, Golding said 10 years on, almost one billion people still live in extreme poverty, and more than one billion others suffer from hunger.

In the race to 2015, he said many developing countries were lagging behind even before the global economic crisis, noting the reasons are many.

"Inadequate investment in human resource development has left us with weak productive capacity," he said.

"This, together with an international trading system that treats us as equals when we are not equal, has rendered us more consumers than producers, more importers than exporters, sustaining jobs elsewhere rather than creating jobs for our own people.

"Our mounting indebtedness pre-empts the limited resources we have. We are, thus, not able to devote adequate resources to education, training and infrastructure - the necessary requirements for investment, job creation and sustained development," Golding said.

Risky borrowers

He said not only is access to financing limited but the cost of borrowing is expensive because "we are perceived by our circumstances to be risky borrowers".

In efforts to achieve the MDG targets, Golding said social-welfare programmes have been increased, but he noted that, in a sense, it was "illusionary for it is done at the expense of more self-sustaining, developmental initiatives".

He said real achievement in the reduction or elimination of poverty is to be measured not by the number of people kept out of poverty by fiscal cash transfers but by the number that escape poverty without the need for such programmes.

Millennium goals

"The millennium goals must, therefore, be seen as a development imperative, not merely as statistical targets," said the Jamaican leader, urging that "much more detailed attention" be paid to the adverse impact of the global crisis on the "struggling efforts" of developing countries to meet the millennium targets.

"Most of us are among the least resilient, with no surpluses to mount counter-cyclical stimulus initiatives," he said, adding "we are striving to adjust as many of the gains we made through considerable effort, and sacrifice has gone into reverse.

"For many of us, it is as if we must start all over again," Golding said, noting that the slow pace of global recovery suggests that "it may be some time before we get to that point".

He said the increasing impact of climate change and the costs associated with counter international terrorism have also constrained progress towards attainment of the MDGs.

"What does this mean for us in terms of fulfilling the goals we set 10 years ago? It requires more than just stocktaking. It requires more than merely appealing for a redoubling of effort," the Jamaican leader said.

"Make no mistake. Without an emergency programmes to re-energise the MDG agenda, those targets will remain elusive in 2015 and beyond," he added.

Golding said the fiscal-policy requirements attached to the resources that have been made available for developing countries, through institutions, like the IMF, were "contractionary".

"They cannot assist in meeting our targets in the short run. A way must be found through more concessionary loans and grants and debt-for-equity swaps for the channelling of resources and the fiscal space to support programmes for eco-nomic empowerment and capacity building," he added.

Golding said while his administration "well appreciates" the constraints facing developed countries as a result of the recession, he urged developed countries not to renege on or postpone their commitments on overseas development assistance.