Weekly Report - 22 November 2007 (INNS 1741-7422)

Latin American countries are ahead of target to meet the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the proportion of the population living in extreme poverty by 2015, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Eclac) revealed in its new report, "Social Panorama of Latin America 2007". Indigence fell by 2.2 percentage points, the equivalent of 10m people, in 2006 to 13.4%, or 71m people. The success is owed in large part to sustained per capita GDP growth of more than 3% a year over the last four years - the highest rate since the 1970s. In absolute terms, however, extreme poverty still remains far in excess of the 62m people before the "lost decade" of the 1980s.