UN urges developing countries on job creation

The world’s 49 poorest countries should act decisively to unleash the potential of the private sector to create more jobs, a United Nations Conference and Trade Development (UNCTAD) report says. The Least Developed Countries Report 2013 was released, yesterday, at the United Nations Economic Commission (Unec) regional office in Kigali, with emphasis on better economic approaches to serve the ever increasing demand for jobs. The report highlights strong recommendations on the need to raise investment, improve services like electricity supply and transport, to enable developing economies to expand productive capacities. Releasing the report, Andrew Mold, the Unec senior economic affairs officer, said poorer nations should act decisively to upgrade national infrastructure, greatly expand credit services and education quality, in order to foster job creation. “It shows that expanding productive capacities is vital in creating as many as 16 million new jobs a year, as more young people in these nations reach working age. If this employment challenge is not met, the world risks being confronted with growing poverty in developing nations,” Mold said. The report has no definite figures per country, but unemployment figures have been ascending, from 8.2 per cent in 2009 to 9.2 per cent in 2012, globally, while in developing countries, the combined rate of unemployment and underemployment shot to as high as 30 per cent. This highlights the severe need for job-creation. The Kigali picture In Rwanda, the Ministry of Public Service and Labour estimates that about 13 per cent of the population in the capital Kigali, and eight per cent in other urban areas are unemployed, while in 2011, two thirds of the total labour force was underemployed on time-related basis. Hanga Umurimo, literally translated as “Create your own job,” is one of the government’s programmes designed to help accelerate economic development through job creation and income generation. The government also targets co-operatives for job-creation, with plans to reduce unemployment to four per cent by 2018. Speaking at the release of the report, yesterday, the Chief Economist at the National Bank of Rwanda, Thomas Kigabo, said job creation is as important as maintaining a healthy economy through strong monetary and fiscal policies. “The main issue is how to sustain growth. It is better to spend more time on the challenges linked to creating jobs. We need to understand the drivers of growth and the sector distribution of growth, in order to respond to job creation in a specific manner; that is what Rwanda is doing,” Kigabo said. “This is an important report whose recommendations will be considered, so that we capture its aspects in Rwanda’s vision for job creation.”