The global economic crisis will keep more than 60 million Asians in poverty this year, the head of the Asian Development Bank said on Monday, urging a greater focus on social welfare including healthcare. "This crisis should be seen as an opportunity to take proactive measures that lay the groundwork for inclusive and sustainable development over the long term," Haruhiko Kuroda, the Bank's president, told an international conference.
Soaring food costs, rising oil prices and, over the past year, the global economic crisis have cost 41 million Chinese workers their jobs while the number of chronically hungry in South Asia has increased by about 100 million, Kuroda said. Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates show 60 million people are stuck below the 1.25 dollar-a-day poverty line because of the economic downturn. "These people would have been freed from the shackles of poverty had economic growth continued at pre-crisis levels," Kuroda told the opening session of the meeting.
The ADB, whose aim is to reduce regional poverty, said Asia's poor have been especially hard hit partly because social safety nets to cushion the impact of the economic slowdown have been inadequate. Many governments have implemented multibillion-dollar stimulus measures to deal with the crisis but these have focused more on infrastructure and tax cuts than social services, says a paper prepared for the conference. The three-day event is being organised by the ADB, the Vietnamese and Chinese governments and the secretariat of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).
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