Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Sinh Hung said several urgent tasks lay before countries in the region, such as generating jobs, creating sustainable funds for healthcare, education, and infrastructure development, promoting social welfare, and improving people’s material and spiritual life.

Unlike the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998, which particularly hurt those below the US$1.25 a day poverty line, the latest global slowdown has hit hardest the “near-poor” in Asia and the Pacific, those people who live on around $2 a day.

Those suffering the most are urban youth and, in some countries, young women who made up a large portion of the workforce in certain export industries such as garments and hi-technology.

The global economic downturn has lowered demand for exports on which the region’s economies depend, forcing job cuts in many of the industries that send their goods overseas and slashing the incomes of thousands of people in the region. Many may struggle to find alternative employment.

“Before the crisis – in the context of high growth rates – only about half of the region’s young labor entrants could find decent jobs, while the rest had to sustain themselves and their families through the informal sector,” said Schaefer-Preuss.

“The need for social protection strategies to address the post-crisis labor market becomes more urgent with the prospect that growth rates may not reach the levels of just a few years ago.”

As Asia begins to recover from the global economic crisis, governments in the region should look to expand social safety nets that can both protect the poor and help spur economic growth, said ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda.

“Governments can use counter-cyclical stimulus packages not only to reinvigorate the economy, but also to put in place measures that promote more robust growth and reduce vulnerability,” he said.

Kuroda stressed that the crisis should be seen as an opportunity to take proactive measures that lay the groundwork for inclusive and sustainable development over the long-term. “Crises such as this one provide the chance to initiate structural reforms for social development.”

Protecting against huge health expenditures, for example, helps the poor directly, but also benefits the economy as people with less need for large “precautionary savings” are likely to increase consumption, or save and invest more productively, he said.

Conference participants urged governments to swiftly improve social safety nets through more effective targeting, and direct more spending to areas such as improving access to education and investing in maternal and child health. Governments need to promote decent employment and improve the conditions for those outside the formal labor market, they said.

At the conference, organized by the ADB, Vietnam, China, the ASEAN Secretariat and nine development partners, delegates also called for policy makers to address gender inequalities and spur full economic recovery.

Women in Asia have been at the forefront of the region’s export-fuelled boom over the past decade, but they were also among the first casualties of the global economic crisis, they said.

ADB earlier this month forecast that the economy of developing Asia will grow 3.9 percent this year, a sharp slowdown from the average 8 percent growth seen in the five years before the crisis. ADB expects the region to expand 6.4 percent next year. The slowdown in growth from pre-crisis levels means that at least 60 million Asians will fail to escape poverty this year.

Reported by Ngan Anh