From the editor

• Author: Jeremy Clift
• Pages: 1

A turning point for the world's poor

Page 1

Many of the world's low-income countries are again having to make tough policy choices. With food and oil prices touching record highs and global growth on a down trend, countries battling to reduce poverty levels need to juggle to curb inflation, while maintaining growth and social spending. The downturn comes at a time when things were starting to look better for low-income countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where some economies are now successfully attracting international investors and are seen as a new tier of "frontier" emerging markets (see David Nellor's article in this issue).

So the new, and the not-so-new, hurdles faced by low-income countries make it even more critical for advanced economies and other donors to live up to their commitments on aid levels and keep working closely with recipient countries to improve aid quality.

At a series of prominent meetings in 2008-the Accra High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness on September 2-4, the UN Summit on the Millennium Development Goals in New york in late September, and the Financing for Development follow-up meeting in Doha in November, among others-a broad array of stakeholders will work toward building consensus and strengthening aid (and development) effectiveness. Alongside aid, it is also critical to move further on opening up major country markets for exports from low-income countries, as well as giving them help to exploit trading opportunities in an increasingly integrated global economy.

This edition of Finance & Development examines key issues facing low-income countries today. Masood Ahmed's overview identifies four major macroeconomic challenges that low-income countries are grappling with and outlines possible approaches to tackle them. Three articles explore emerging trends...