Millennium devpt goals out of reach for India: ADB President

Hyderabad, Mar 9 (UNI) Notwithstanding India's improved performance in the recent years, which has been among the best in the world, India will not reach many of the Millennium Development Goals(MDGs) by 2015, Asian Development Bank President Haruhika Kuroda said today.

The long-term trend rate of growth had streadily increased from an average of 3.5 per cent a year between 1950s and 1970s to around seven per cent to eight per cent in the recent years and this had led to decline in incidence of poverty from 36 per cent in 1993-94 to 26 per cent in 1999-2000, he noted while delivering a lecture on ''Investing in Infrastructure: Key to Economic Growth'' at the Administrive Staff College of India here.

''The prowess of India's IT and IT-enabled services, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and various manufacturing segments is being recognised the world over and its macro-fundamentals are sound and foreign exchange reserves are comfortable at around USD 139 billion,'' he pointed out, adding that ''Despite these improvements, hundreds of millions of India's people remain poor.

Given the current pace and pattern of growth, India will not reach many of the non-income MDG goals for maternal mortality rates, or gender parity secondary enrolment ratios within the stipulated time frame of 2015. Since India accounts for nearly 16 per cent of world population, this will imply that the world as a whole will fall short of attaining the MDGs,'' he said.

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