UN body foresees rising poverty in L America amid economic downturn

Special Report:Global Financial Crisis

SANTIAGO, Feb. 5 (Chinese media) -- The UN Economic

Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) said Thursday that there

would be an increase in the number of poor people in the region due to rising

unemployment and income declines caused by the global economic crisis.

"We could expect the poverty reduction to stagnate,

or the poverty will rise," Martin Hopenhayn, director of the Social Development

Division of the Santiago-based ECLAC, said in a report published Thursday.

According to the ECLAC, in 2007, 184 million people,

or 34.1 percent of the total Latin American population lived in poverty and 68

million or 12.6 percent in extreme poverty.

In 2008, the number of people living in poverty

dropped almost by one percent to 182 million, while those in extreme poverty

rose to 71 million.

The region had better development between 2002 and

2007, when the number of poor people declined by 9.9 percent and extreme poverty

levels fell 6.8 percent, thanks to the economic growth and the improvement of

the labor market.

With the current crisis, the region is at risk of

losing what it has won, Hopenhayn said.

The ECLAC has recommended the governments in the

region to improve the labor market functioning and reinforce social assistance

to vulnerable groups through food baskets, emergency pension and jobs programs.

Latin America now still has a relatively sound

macro-economic foundation and a high level of foreign exchange reserves, but the

impact of the current economic crisis is not predictable, said the ECLAC.