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SINGAPORE: Asia must work harder to narrow economic and social
disparities that remain despite the region’s economic boom, the
head of Brunei’s economic development board said here Friday.
While Asian economies have resumed strong
economic growth 10 years after the 1997 to 1998 financial crisis,
the per capita income of the region’s richest country, Japan, is
200 times bigger than its poorest nation, Timothy Ong said.
“As we celebrate the achievements that
statistics tell us, we need to remind ourselves how disparate the
region remains and how disparity in certain areas is growing and how
much more needs to be done,” he said at a forum organized by the
London School of Economics.
Ong, acting chairman of the Brunei Economic
Development Board, said inequality was rising not only in terms of
incomes but also in educational attainment and access to basic
services.
Japan’s per capita income is more than 20
times the average for East Asia, he told an audience of business
executives, academics and diplomats.
Even in China, the income disparity between some
of its cities and rural areas can be as high as 14 times, he said,
adding this could have implications for “social cohesion.”
“Consider the fact that whenever we point to
examples of East Asia’s prowess in technology, in innovation, in
science and in mathematics, a few countries always make the list and
there is no mention of the rest,” he said.
Wealthy economies like South Korea, Singapore
and Taiwan spend 2 percent to 2.5 percent of their gross domestic
product (GDP) for research and development, he said, while
Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand spend only 0.1 percent to
0.2 percent of their GDP in that area.
Ong said the number of patents per 100,000
people is six to nine times higher in emerging Asia than in Latin
America and the developing countries of Europe.
But the “vast majority” of these patents are
from Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore, “with the rest
lagging far, far, far behind,” he said.
“Consider the implications of large parts of
emerging Asia being left out of the new economic geography that we
celebrate today,” Ong said.
“While we celebrate emerging Asia’s
remarkable changes, and there is reason to do so, let us remind
ourselves that there is still much unfinished business.”
Oil-rich Brunei, whose citizens number fewer
than 400,000, boasts one of the highest per capita incomes in Asia.
-- AFP
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