FACTBOX: Financial crisis hits jobs, incomes in poor countries

FACTBOX: Financial crisis hits jobs, incomes in poor countries

02 Apr 2009 08:47:00 GMT

Source: AlertNet

Here are some facts about the negative impacts of the global economic downturn on developing countries and the world's poorest people:

* The number of people living on less than $1.25 a day is expected to be about 90 million higher by the end of 2010 because of the effects of the financial crisis.

* Remittances are declining, with a fall of at least 5 percent forecast for 2009. In Bolivia, they almost halved last year.

* Private capital flows to the developing world are slumping sharply, with net inflows dropping this year to about one-third of the peak $1.2 trillion reached two years ago.

* India's government estimates 500,000 jobs were lost in the formal sector between October and December last year.

* In Bangladesh, in the past month, more than 4,000 workers are reported to have returned to the country, and the numbers leaving to find work elsewhere fell by 45 percent in January year-on-year.

* Cambodia has lost about 50,000 jobs in the garment industry, its only significant export industry, mainly affecting young women. Around 300,000 migrant workers in Thailand have been told to go back to Cambodia.

* Nomadic herder families in Mongolia have seen the price of cashmere, their main cash product, drop 40 percent.

* In China, an estimated 20 million migrant workers have lost manufacturing and construction jobs.

* Democratic Republic of Congo has warned there could be an additional 350,000 unemployed in Katanga province as mineral companies slash production.

* With diamond prices dropping, the Central African Republic expects a 50 percent cut in revenues compared to 2008.

* The value of Kenya's tea exports has declined by 60 percent since September.

* Mining accounts for about 80 percent of Zambia's exports, but copper mines are closing as the price of the metal dropped by nearly a third last year. Some 8,000 workers - 27 percent of the total mining workforce - have lost their jobs.

Sources: UK Department for International Development, World Bank, Overseas Development Institute