The world's developing countries this year will turn in the strongest economic growth in three decades and should continue to enjoy solid growth rates in 2005 and and 2006, the World Bank predicted Tuesday. The bank, issuing its latest «Global Economic Prospects,» said that the economies of developing countries would expand by 6.1 percent this year, the best showing since 1974. The bank predicted developing nations would turn in growth rates of 5.4 percent in 2005 and 5.1 percent in 2006, down from this year's surge but still far above the 3.4 percent growth developing nations saw in 2002. Developing nations are benefiting from a growth upswing in major industrial countries and also economic reforms they are pursuing in their own countries, the World Bank said. The bank predicted that the world's major industrial countries would see growth of 3.5 percent this year, including expected growth of 4.3 percent in the United States. The 30-year high for growth this year in developing countries followed a strong 5.2 percent growth rate in 2003. The World Bank said this performance should help many of these poor countries achieve the Millennium Development Goals of cutting global poverty in half by 2015. Improvements in economic fundamentals should help boost economic growth per person in developing nations to an average of 3.5 percent per year between 2006 and 2015, the World Bank forecast, double the growth rate in the 1990s. «Such growth would enable many developing countries to halve the incidence of extreme poverty by 2015,» the World Bank said. But the report warned that nations in sub-Saharan Africa are not likely to achieve the goal of cutting poverty in half by 2015 given a number of daunting challenges they face. --More 2307 Local Time 2007 GMT
