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Asia's newest and poorest nation East Timor faces a tough task lifting
itself out of poverty despite social and political gains and rich
unexploited oil and gas reserves, a United Nations report said on
Thursday.
The Path Out of Poverty report painted a bleak
picture of conditions in the nation of one million people, where the
economy has been shrinking and development indicators only slightly
improving.
With per capita income at just $370 per year, the
fledgling nation is the poorest in the region and its economy has
eroded further as United Nations personnel and aid workers have left
over the past two years, it said.
East Timor gained full
independence in May 2002 after more than two years of UN stewardship
preceded by almost 24 years of Indonesian rule. Peacekeeping missions
remained here until last May.
The former Portuguese colony voted
to break away from Indonesia in a UN-sponsored ballot in 1999,
infuriating the Indonesian military and militias who murdered at least
1 400 East Timorese and destroyed almost 70% of all buildings here
before leaving, according to the UN.
The country's indicators
lag abysmally behind most other Asian nations, data cited in the United
Nations Development Programme report showed.
Life expectancy in
2004 was 55,5 years compared to a 70,5% average for East Asia Pacific
nations, half the population has no access to safe drinking water, and
90 children out of 1 000 die before they turn one, it said.
Data
on income poverty has not been updated since 2001, when about 40% of
people were estimated as living below the poverty line which was set at
55 US cents per day in East Timor, the report said.
"The situation is unlikely to have improved given the sluggish performance of the economy," it said.
Sustained
economic growth was crucial for development, it noted, adding that for
now, "growth of any kind is still proving elusive ... Timor-Leste
urgently needs a clearly laid out strategy for pro-poor rural
development."
Growth would have to start with agriculture, which
employs around three-quarters of the labour force but contributes only
one-fifth of gross domestic product, it said.
Annual investment
to achieve annual economic growth of five to seven percent would need
to be $48-million, it estimated, in order to meet a goal of reducing
poverty by one third by 2015.
"Given the likely revenues from
oil and gas, this is technically feasible and financially affordable,
so it would be difficult to justify any plan that did not aim to
achieve the poverty goal," the report said.
Despite the millions
of dollars expected to flow from oil and gas in the coming years, the
report noted that this income was still peppered with uncertainties and
the government would "have limited possibilities unless requesting
additional financial support" from donors.
"They have their
vision of where they want to go, of the nation that they want to be,"
the report said of the East Timorese. "But realizing that vision will
be a long and difficult task and many painful decisions lie ahead."
Prime
Minister Mari Alkatiri, who acknowledged in the report the long road
ahead, said in a statement that East Timor had embarked on "the right
track", with some indicators such as maternal mortality improving.
"We must not deny these facts," he said. - AFP
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