Pandemic threatens Asia-Pacific's progress on global development goals - ADB

Reuters reports that the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said that the coronavirus pandemic may have pushed as many as 80 million people in developing Asia into extreme poverty last year, threatening to derail progress on global goals to tackle poverty and hunger by 2030.

Developing Asia's extreme poverty rate - or the proportion of its people living on less than $1.90 a day - would have fallen to 2.6% in 2020 from 5.2% in 2017 without COVID-19, but the crisis likely pushed last year's projected rate higher by about 2 percentage points, ADB simulations showed.

Among reporting economies in Asia and the Pacific, which refers to the 46 developing and three developed ADB member economies, only about one in four posted economic growth last year, it said.

As unemployment rates increased the region also lost about 8% of work hours, affecting poorer households and workers in the informal sector.

The economic damage brought about by the pandemic had further intensified the challenge of meeting global development goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015. U.N. members unanimously passed 17 Sustainable Development Goals, known as SDGs, in 2015, creating a blueprint of ambitious tasks from ending hunger and gender inequality to expanding access to education and health care. The goals had a deadline of 2030.