Firms urged to trade with poor countries

THE Government is to tap private industry in an effort to build trade links and swap skills with the world’s poorest countries.

Minister for Overseas Development Aid Tom Kitt announced he would set up a private sector forum to encourage investors here to help nurture enterprise in developing nations.

He said also he wanted to increase the numbers of students coming to study here from Africa and other underdeveloped parts of the world, and intended to find a better mechanism for Irish people to volunteer their time and expertise to countries in need.

Mr Kitt was speaking at the international launch of the United Nations Human Development Report for 2003 which chronicles the progress of 175 countries in key areas of life including wealth, healthcare, education and HIV/AIDs prevention and treatment.

The report shows the world to be hopelessly off target for reaching the so-called Millennium Goals agreed in 2000 which include halving extreme poverty, halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education by 2015.

Current estimates are that the poorest African nations will not reach the goal for poverty eradication until 2147 and that the two-thirds reduction in child mortality will take 20 years longer.

Mr Kitt said: "This report starkly exposes an unequal world which is morally unacceptable."

Ireland ranks 12th out of the 175 for overall wealth and progress but slips to number 16 on the "human poverty index" which takes into account issues such as life expectancy low-income households, long-term unemployment and literacy levels.

The country falls to 17th place out of the top 20 countries, which include most of our European neighbours, when the issue of equality is factored in.

The report was launched simultaneously in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique a country considered a ray of hope in sub-Saharan Africa because of the strides being made in tackling deprivation.

But the head of the United Nations Development Programme, Mark Malloch Brown, pointed out that even with Mozambique's impressive 9% annual growth rate, average per capita income was one-hundredth that of Ireland's.

Life expectancy was half that of an Irish citizen and the likelihood of contracting HIV/AIDS was 100 times greater.

Mr Malloch Brown said the world was at a decision point.

On the one hand, it was facing a deep development crisis with over one billion people languishing in absolute poverty; and on the other, it was witnessing how rapid progress can be achieved through examples such as formerly destitute countries such as India and China.

"We can still change that two-class, two-speed world if we choose," he said.