ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to capture in aggregate fashion some of the change, or lack thereof, that has relevance for development assistance strategies, levels, and/or allocations. It provides an overview without getting caught up in country details. Hence, the review must be quantitative and focus on a small number of statistics. Overall, the growth record of developing countries since the initiation of significant development assistance efforts has been quite impressive. The slow growth of Income and exports in the South Asian countries stands in marked contrast to the Far East region. Overall, real per capita income grew more than twice as rapidly in the Far East than in South Asia. While the exports of the Far East grew by more than 700 percent, exports of the South Asian region increased by only 240 percent. There were no fast-growing countries in this area, but export growth in Nepal and Bangladesh was slightly less than in the other nations.
