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Contributions from
the Column
Monitor
Challenging guidelines
Afghanistan: NGOs adopt code of conduct
AIDS drug:
Brazil achieves price reduction
US Congress slows down
Millennium Challenge Account
German development
budget 2006
Pro-poor growth in practice
Military intervention hardly helps
G8 summit disappoints NGOs
GTZ attracts
international funds
Generic pharma
factory in Kabul
New EU trade
preferences
Privatisation dispute misses the point
Scant participation
by civil society
8-9/2005
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Pro-poor growth in practice
Where there is economic growth, there is scope to reduce poverty. This effect is intensified if those sectors that employ poor people expand. Therefore, growth in agriculture makes the greatest contribution to poverty reduction in absolute terms, because this is where most poor people work. Urban growth (in industry and services), in turn, disproportionately favours urban populations. In Vietnam, the national poverty rate fell by an annual 7.8 % during the 1990s, but the figure for towns was 11 %. These findings were made by an international study group, commissioned by the World Bank, the French development agency AFD and the German and British development ministries. The group examined 14 countries to find out how pro-poor growth can be achieved. The main recommendation in the group’s report, which the World Bank published in June, is to invest more in rural development in order to stimulate agriculture. At the same time, opportunities in the other sectors should be enhanced – for instance, by providing a favourable investment climate or improving secondary and tertiary education.
According to non-governmental development organisations, the report relies too heavily on the effectiveness of economic incentives. In an alternative case study on Honduras, Germany’s Protestant Church Development Service (EED) finds that poverty and inequality also stem from unequal power relations. The EED therefore states that the fight against poverty does not only require economic measures, but political ones as well. (ell)
Websites:
The World Bank report:
http://www.worldbank.org/propoorgrowth
The EED report: http://www.eed.de/fix/files/doc/Pro%20Poor_Lanzet.pdf
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