Highlighting linkage between poverty and labour productivity, a new UN report has said that proper investment in training and skill enhancement would help reduce poverty to a great extent.
"Productivity is the cornerstone for poverty alleviation," International Labour Organisation's Chief of the Employment Trends Team Lawrence Jeff Johnson said briefing reporters on the report titled 'Key Indicators of the Labour Market'.
"The only asset the poor have is often their labour. And if we are to reduce poverty, we need to improve productivity," Johnson said yesterday adding that bolstering skills and labour could play a key role.
In South and East Asia, Johnson pointed out that the ILO has seen a marked decrease in the working poor, which he defined as those individuals that are working but are unable to earn at least $2 a day for themselves and for their families.
"Although productivity in East Asia has doubled in the last 10 years, the United States remains the global leader by a considerable amount in terms of labour productivity per person employed in 2006", the report noted.
South Asia, Central and South-Eastern Europe (non-European Union countries) and the Commonwealth of Independent States have all seen their productivity rise in recent years.
However, the situation is different in sub-Saharan Africa, where there has been only "moderate" growth in productivity, he said.
The report also said that the productivity gap between the industrialised region and most others remains wide, even as productivity levels have been