9:24 PM Apr 24, 1996

ACKNOWLEDGING ECONOMIC STATISTICS THAT SHOW THE RAPID GROWTH THAT HAS SWEPT THE WIDENING RICH POOR GAP.

The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the Asian Development Bank (AsDB) have released new reports showing continued growth across the region, yet as much as 80 per cent of the world's 800 million poor are struggling to survive in these fast developing economies.

Quoting regional government sources, the 'Bangkok Post' says that ministers meeting in the Thai capital, have accepted the report's findings and will over the next few days try to come up with ways to address the problem.

"There is an urgent need for countries to tackle poverty, which is manifested in limited access to health, education and other social services," says Adrianus Mooy, ESCAP executive secretary.

Mooy is among delegates participating at ESCAP's 52nd commission meeting that began last week and ends on Wednesday in the Thai capital which in itself reflects South-east Asia's lop-sided economic growth.

Thailand ranks fourth in the world in terms of income disparities and with poverty mainly gripping the rural areas, the capital Bangkok has become an urban nightmare as it struggles to cope with an influx of migrants from the countryside.

Notorious for its traffic jams and high pollution rates, the city's is also home to a huge commercial sex industry fed by young rural girls trying to escape the poverty trap.

The persistent "poverty amidst plenty" is a dilemma that "threatens to cloud the otherwise rosy economic picture of the region", says ESCAP in its new economic survey.

But while delegates at the meeting were agreed in a call for greater government expenditure on social welfare, non-governmental organisation (NGO) representatives are at odds with an ESCAP call for increased liberalisation and privatisation.

The ESCAP survey of the 59 Asia-Pacific countries represented in Bangkok, calls for greater deregulation of the economy, lowering of tax burdens on the private sector and speedy implementation of agreements reached at the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT), now the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The survey focuses primarily on economic and infrastructural development, trade and food security in the region, and also calls for further expansion in technology-intensive industries and improvements in labour productivity.

But NGO activists such as Kamal Malhotra, co-director of the Bangkok-based Forum on the South, say that liberalisation and privatisation policies espoused by ESCAP and Western lending institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have in many cases served to exacerbate the problem.

"The problem with such reports is that the social factor is totally separated from the economic one," he says. "It is just not recognised that it is these kinds of growth models which ESCAP endorses and advocates, that have fuelled the social problems existing in this region."

Activists also take issue with ESCAP's failure to properly examine how historical and geo-political factors have impacted on the region's economic growth.

For example, while South Korea and Taiwan got their initial boost on the path to economic 'tigerdom' due to preferential access to U.S. markets, technology and finance, countries like Thailand and the Philippines saw large sums of money flowing in through" rest and recreation" facilities for American soldiers.

Till today, the commercial sex industry remains a major foreign exchange earner in several countries in the region.

Meanwhile, economic growth in South Korea came under autocratic rule that did little for the advancement of labour rights.

Today, the same is happening in China, say activists, who note that Beijing's double-digit growth rates are recorded in an environment that does not tolerate any dissidence, labour activism or political plurality.

NGO activists argue that such issues needed to be addressed in the ESCAP survey, which also ignores the heavy environmental costs that has come with the Asian economic development model.

Intensive application of fertilisers in Taiwan has not only contributed to soil acidification, zinc loss and an overall decline in soil fertility, but heavy pesticide use has done irreparable damage to the country's surface water and underground water sources, say environmentalists.

In South Korea and Thailand, rapid deforestation has reduced tree cover to between one-third and one-fifth of the original coverage area, while as in Bangkok, Seoul's air is heavily polluted with sulphur oxide as a result of massive industrial production.

"The unquestioning acceptance of dominant economic paradigms as promoted by Western institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, without any discussion or debate, is alarming,"says Malhotra.