Unless rich countries keep their promises...

Accra, July 17, GNA - Reduction of poverty in developing nations through the Millennium Developing Goals would not be met, unless the rich countries kept their pledges to deliver financing for development. The 2003 Human Development Report said on Thursday that despite promises by wealthy nation to eradicate extreme poverty, "developing nations still need more aid, fairer terms of trade and meaningful debt relief".

At the Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development last year, rich nations promised to increase annual aid flows by 16 billion dollars by 2006.

"But even if the commitments announced in Monterrey are fulfilled, the total will still fall far short of the 100 billion dollars minimum needed per year to meet the goals," the Report said.

It noted that the concept behind a fair deal was for both rich and developing countries to be held accountable to benchmarks and deadlines. "Without rich nations doing their share, the poor countries will not be able to achieve the goals," Eveline Herfkens, Executive Co-coordinator of the Millennium Development Goals Campaign Team stressed.

The Millennium Development Goals are a series of time bound, quantifiable targets ranging from halving poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015.

The Report to be launched in Accra on Friday challenged rich countries to set concrete targets and deadlines and ensure that they dismantled unfair trade subsidies and tariffs to create a level playing field by providing OECD countries more than 300 billion dollars in agricultural subsidies each year.

The Report put subsidies to US cotton growers at more than triple the amount of US government aid to Sub-Saharan Africa and in the EU, cash subsidy to every dairy cow exceeded total per capita EU trade to Sub-Saharan Africa.

It also asked rich countries to write off unsustainable debt, saying rich countries needed to provide more meaningful debt relief. The Report said aid inflows must be stepped up while creating better access to technological progress.

It was not happy that only 10 per cent of research and development focused on the health problems of 90 per cent of the world's people with rich countries undermining the right of the poor in making life-saving drugs available at affordable prices.