Tonga first in Human development in the Pacific [1]
Wednesday, November 15, 2006 - 19:14. Updated on Sunday, September 14, 2014 - 22:02.
(Pacnews) For the fist time since the United Nations began releasing its Human Development report, Tonga has displaced Samoa as the island with the highest rate of human development in the Pacific.
Of the 177 countries listed in this year's UN Human Development Index, Tonga ranked 55th as opposed to Samoa's 75th and Fiji's 90th rankings.
The island kingdom is the only Pacific island nation that got listed in the high human development category of the UN Index, coming ahead of countries like Malaysia, Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Its human development index score of 0.815 compares favourably with Norway, the number one rank country with an index value of 0.965
Tonga's high literacy rate of 98.9 was a turning factor in its high ranking as data for Samoa and Fiji on adult literacy was not available.
The other countries of Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea got a ranking of 119, 128, and 139 respectively in the UN development index for 2006. The three together with Samoa and Fiji were listed as countries that enjoy medium human development.
Speaking at the launch of the report in Suva, the UN resident representative in Fiji Richard Dictus said the performance of the six islands of the Pacific in the report was extraordinary.
"This year is the first year that we have data for Tonga, and Tonga has come in place 55 in the human development ranking, closely followed by Samoa in ranking 75 and Fiji with the ranking of 90," said Mr Dictus.
"That actually means that these three countries are actually performing near or close to a number of developed countries in the world."
Mr Hafiz Pasha, Director of the UN bureau of Asia/Pacific noted that there have been some improvements in the performance of some countries in the region but Papua New Guinea experienced drops in some of its human development indicators.
...This index is really a political score-card and in releasing this report, we at the UN hopes that it will create some sort of competition amongst member countries....