"Experts here say some 1.2 billion people -- one in five on the planet --
live on less than a dollar a day. Although it is hard to pinpoint which
country is the most impoverished of all, UNCTAD officials say their best
statistics show Ethiopia with the lowest known per capita gross domestic
product."
Poorest country looks up from bottom of global trading system Eds: Also
moved on general wire
By DIRK BEVERIDGE
The Associated Press
02/18/00 5:24 AM Eastern
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- While a U.N. trade conference ponders ways to lift
the fortunes of poor nations, one of the poorest -- Ethiopia -- offers an
economic perspective that focuses more on fickle nature than the red-hot
Internet.
While e-commerce and dotcom ventures have helped fuel prosperity in the
wealthy West, the backbone of Ethiopia's economy are farmers who still have
to hope for rain for a successful crop.
It's a marked example of the inequalities that have worsened amid rapid
globalization -- a main topic at the summit of the U.N. Conference on Trade
and Development, meeting here all week,
In landlocked Ethiopia, considered one of the poorest nations on earth,
almost half the children are malnourished and citizens earn an average $106
a year. Coffee -- whose price Ethiopia cannot control -- accounts for 60
percent of hard currency earnings.
"We still do not have the capacity to develop irrigation," explains Kassahun
Ayele, Ethiopia's minister for trade and industry. "We depend on rain for
our agriculture."
As it tries to do better in other industries, Ethiopia says it faces a maze
of bureaucracy, global politics and prejudice hurting it from joining in the
growth enjoyed by developed nations.
Still, Ethiopia and the other poorest of the poor among nations, which are
pressing for a say in the world marketplace, see some hope that developed
nations are beginning to hear their message. They are seeking an end to
tarrifs that inflate the price of their products in foreign markets and
relief from heavy debts.
But they say the world's biggest economy, the United States, shows less
willingness to go along with these ideas than other huge traders, Japan and
the European Union.
"A glimmer of hope is beginning to show," said Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, who
represents Bangladesh at UNCTAD and the World Trade Organization in Geneva.
"This is the convergence of view, a burgeoning consensus that something
needs to be done and soon, or else the grave danger of poverty ... will
erode civilization's gains."
The big international lending institutions, the International Monetary Fund
and the World Bank, have joined the call for including the world's poorest
in decision-making on trade rules that affect billions of people.
Experts here say some 1.2 billion people -- one in five on the planet --
live on less than a dollar a day. Although it is hard to pinpoint which
country is the most impoverished of all, UNCTAD officials say their best
statistics show Ethiopia with the lowest known per capita gross domestic
product.
African nations in particular say they are being ignored as other nations
move forward in technological innovation and prosperity.
"Ultimately, a new map of the world is being drawn up and an entire
continent -- Africa -- is purely and simply being rubbed out," Algerian
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika said in an address today to the conference.
Most African nations have a hard timing attracting direct investment. Many
insist they have cleaned up their legal and business systems after learning
from past mistakes -- but the outside world hasn't taken time to learn
what's going on.
The Ethiopians say the troubles faced by their cattle industry illustrate
the injustices of world trade. They have plenty of livestock, but lack
veterinary expertise to convince most buyers their beef is safe.
They might be able to do better selling leather, but run into tariffs
imposed by developed countries protecting their own cattle farmers.
Things can get even more complicated.
Some Ethiopian entrepreneurs export shoes, but face even higher tariffs
slapped onto part of the shoes if they use, for example, soles from Italy.
Some nations impose one tariff on the Italian leather in the sole and
another on the rest of the shoe made from Ethiopian leather, raising the
ultimate price for consumers.
"They say the Ethiopian product is the covering, but not the sole," said
Mussie Delelegn Arega, counselor at Ethiopia's mission to the U.N. Office in
Geneva.