Local GDP figures inaccurate, says Lankan Professor
The grave dangers facing the world due to climate change, deaths due to widespread hunger and malnutrition and spiraling poverty now prevalent in the world and the unreliability of the statistics on these matters were revealed at the inauguration of the 7th Annual Conference of the Organization of Professional Association of Sri Lanka (OPA) held this week in Colombo.
Prof. Gamini Herath, University of Monash Australia/Malaysia in his keynote address discussing the theme “The Role of Agriculture in Food Sovereignty and Poverty Eradication’, cautioned that certain statistical information is unreliable and untrue at certain instances and pointed out that it is more so with regard to computation of the GDP.
Agriculture which has a grave impact on food security of the people is now calculated at around 10 per cent of the GDP which in his perspective is wrong. He said that the importance of agriculture is now ignored and many important things that should have been included in the GDP are not included.
The world has not given serious thought to the gravity of the enormous challenges confronting agriculture and consequent to that poverty, hunger and malnutrition and thus, he said the world has failed to resolve the serious crisis situation emerging.
One of the major items ignored in the GDP, Prof. Herath pointed out is what is produced in the gardens of individual households and consumed and if those figures are also included in the GDP, the agriculture percentage in the GDP would spiral up to about 30 per cent, instead of 10 per cent. GDP is only good for politicians to talk about, he quipped.
Though China’s GDP growth rate is indicated at 15 per cent, if the drastic damage that is caused to the natural resources with their agriculture and industry is included, China’s GDP growth would register a negative rate, Prof Herath said. He pointed out that industry, agriculture, etc also damage the natural resources such as spoiling the ground water base, depletion of water, etc and cautioned that some of these natural resources that are consumed, like water cannot be replaced.
Stressing the importance of agriculture, he said that the present world population of the world is 7 billion and it would increase to 9 billion by 2050 and said that all these people have to be fed. So agriculture, he noted, is very important and finding food for such a vast population would be an enormous task.
Th poverty rate is very high, he said, and indicated that 800 million people in the world are earning less than one dollar a day but that actual figure is around 1.2 billion.
He said that another major problem facing the world is climate change where 30 per cent of greenhouse gas is emitted by agriculture and they all are culpable for this tragedy and as a result of climate change more people are dying of hunger, of malnutrition and poverty would spiral. The number of deaths from hunger and malnutrition would surpass the number of deaths caused by tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS combined.
Introducing the theme ‘Food sovereignty and eradication of hunger’, Athauda Jayawardena, President-elect and Chairman, Annual Conference Committee said that in the year 2000 UN under its Millennium Declaration to achieve sustainable development for the poorest of the world identified one of the goals as eradication of poverty.
He said that in Sri Lanka according to available information around 40 per cent are earning less than US$2.5 a day and about 65 per cent of Sri Lanka’s GDP has been shared by the best of 20 per cent of the population, while the bottom 20 per cent of the population share only 4.5 per cent of the GDP. These facts indicate that poverty is at a considerable extent in Sri Lanka. This could reflect on malnutrition and deaths, he said.
To eradicate poverty and hunger in Sri Lanka, he said it is essential that programmes should be implemented based on appropriate economic policies. Basic food items, he said should be made available at affordable prices to ensure that the poor would have access to them.
V. Ganesh, President, OPA said that they take up matters of topical importance as well as national interest that are relevant to the country to deliberate and these outcomes would be presented to government and to others concerned.