Financing Development Gaps in the Countries with Special Needs in the Asia-Pacific Region

The Asia-Pacific region has witnessed impressive growth in recent years which has almost doubled the real income per capita in the region since the early 1990s. While growth in the region has been accompanied by significant declines in poverty, income inequality has also risen in many countries dampening the positive gains of growth. Despite rising inequality and other adverse developments including the global economic crisis, the Asia-Pacific region as a whole has made impressive progress in many MDG indicators, especially in reducing poverty. For several indicators, the Asia-Pacific region has already achieved the targets, e.g. reducing gender disparities in primary, secondary, and tertiary education enrolment; preventing a rise in HIV prevalence; stopping the spread of tuberculosis (TB); reducing the consumption of ozone depleting substances; and halving the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water. On the other hand, the region lags behind in some major areas, such as in reducing the extent of hunger, ensuring that girls and boys reach the last grade of primary education, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health provision, and providing basic sanitation. The overall progress in the Asia-Pacific region, however, masks considerable variations between country groupings and sub-regions. In particular, several of the region’s countries with special needs (CSN) have made slow progress in terms of a number of indicators. Indeed, the region still remains home to two‐thirds of the global extreme poor.