UN General Assembly
1956

131. According to the report on Measures for the Economic Development of Under-developed Countries, prepared by a group of experts appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1951, Latin America, which has one of the highest rates of population growth, needs $2,540 million to increase its national per capita income by 2 per cent and thus appears to be the area of the world that shows the smallest deficit. In other words, of the five areas into which the underdeveloped countries are grouped in the study, Latin America has the least headway to make up in order to enter upon a period of normal economic activity which would enable it to cope with its own agricultural and industrial development. With the progress thus made, it would soon become one of the areas sufficiently advanced to co-operate in raising the standards of needier areas.