UN country office supports bid for "LDC-like" status

The UN office in Namibia has lent its weight to the country's plea for recognition as a Least Developed Country (LDC), in a bid to unlock additional foreign assistance. "We are supporting the country's appeal to be given a LDC-like status, as the country's current annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita is more than the required $800 to qualify as LDC," said Simon Nhongo, the UN's resident coordinator in Namibia. However, "The country's existing GDP does not reflect an accurate picture of the extreme poverty that most people live in. If you even step out of the capital, Windhoek, you will find people who earn less than 1/10th of the existing per capita GDP," he commented. In September, President Hifikepunya Pohamba called on the UN to reconsider Namibia's status as a middle-income country at the world body's 60th session in New York. Currently, 49 countries are included in the list of LDCs. According to the UN Development Programme's Human Development Index (HDI) 2005, Namibia's per capita GDP is more than US $2,000. Nhongo explained that his office has been motivated to support Namibia's request because of the "great disparity in the distribution of income", as a direct result of the historical disadvantage faced by the black majority under colonialism and apartheid. According to the HDI, which focuses on three measurable indicators of human development: living a long and healthy life; being educated; and having a decent standard of living, the richest 10 percent of households in the country have more than 50 percent of total income of private households. Namibia is ranked at 125 out of 177 countries in the HDI. The high incidence of HIV/AIDS - more than 21 percent - has also affected the country's development, Nhongo noted. Life expectancy is about 48 years. "LDC-like" status would enable Namibia to raise funds at "low or even zero interest rates", it would be forgiven debt and have greater access to resources not only from the World Bank's International Development Agency but other bodies, he explained. Namibia is seeking "partial LDC status" to raise funds for projects in its under-developed areas, most of which lie in the largely rural north, said Susan Lewis, director of development cooperation for the government's National Planning Commission. The country enjoyed a "partial LDC status" for about a decade after its independence from apartheid South Africa in 1990. Under this arrangement it received preferential treatment from UN agencies, "which, however, was not the case with the other donors," she added. The arrangement lapsed after the country's annual per capita GDP climbed to $2,000 and it was categorised as a Middle Income Country. Lewis pointed out that there were several "low-middle-income" countries in the same boat as Namibia. "We need to lobby the UN as a group." In his address to the UN assembly Pohamba made a plea for preferential treatment for all low-middle-income countries, to enable them to meet the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - a set of development goals that includes halving poverty, reducing child mortality by two-thirds and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases by 2015. "If the countries regarded as low-middle-income countries are to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 they will require increased support from the international community, including market access as well as access to financial sources, such as the International Development Association [part of the World Bank] and Official Development Assistance [a category of development aid]," he pointed out. The process for reviewing the income status of a country was "long and cumbersome" and included reviews by various UN agencies, said Nhongo, but added that he hoped an annual World Bank economic review team expected in Namibia next month would pay heed to the country's concerns. Daniel Motinga, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Research, a Windhoek-based think-tank, said Namibia was one of the most unequal societies in the world, and an LDC status would help to address the situation. "People in the rural areas are living in extreme poverty," he noted, adding that during a recent trip to the northern Kavango region he found pensioners earning little more than a dollar a day "better-off than those who owned livestock". Motinga observed that in the first decade after the country's independence only 22,000 jobs had been created, while the number of unemployed grew from 340,000 in 1991 to 432,000 in 2001. Although the new household income survey statistics have yet to be published, Motinga felt that inequality had worsened since the last survey in 1994.