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The article reports on how mobile-phone firms have found a profitable way to help the poor help themselves. Mobile phones have become indispensable in the rich world. But they are even more useful in the developing world, where the availability of other forms of communication--roads, postal systems or fixed-line phones--is often limited. But despite rapid subscriber growth in much of the developing world, only a small proportion of people--around five percent in both India and sub-Saharan Africa--have their own mobile phones. Several operators from developing countries have teamed up under the auspices of the GSM Association, which promotes the use of GSM, the world's dominant mobile-phone standard. They invited the handset-makers to bid for a contract to supply up to six million handsets for less than $40 each. The contract was won by Motorola. Delivery of handsets began in April. This week the procurement process began for more handsets, to be delivered from next January. As well as letting smaller operators pool their bargaining power, this scheme aims to draw manufacturers' attention to the needs of developing countries. The GSMA is now making a 50-country study that will, it hopes, provide conclusive proof of the benefits of cutting taxes on mobile phones.

This section presents economic news and statistics, as well as statistics on health and life expectancy, for 25 emerging market countries. In China, consumer prices increased by 3.0% in the year to November, up from 1.8% the previous month. China ran a trade surplus of almost $5 billion in November, the second biggest this year. Industrial production in India rose by 5.4% in the year to October. The stock market rose by 2.5% over the week. In Mexico, industrial production fell by 0.8% in the year to October. Consumer prices rose by 4.0% in the 12 months to November. The gap in life expectancies between rich and poor countries is widening, according to the World Health Report 2003. A baby born today in Japan can expect to live for 82 years, with more than 90% of that in good health. In Sierra Leone, however, average life expectancy at birth is a mere 34 years, with more than five of those years spent in ill health. The WHO advocates international assistance to reform health-care systems in poor places.

A new report gives governments some facts to ponder about economic development. For a better understanding of the plight of the world's poor, the protestors against capitalism who descended on the World Trade Organisation's meeting in Cancún last month ought perhaps to have gone to Haiti instead. In Haiti, one of the world's poorest countries, prospective business people have to wait an average of 203 days for permission to start trading. Then they have to pay registration costs and satisfy minimum capital requirements of around four times the average Haitian's annual income. The juxtaposition of stifling bureaucracy and abject poverty is no coincidence, argues a new report, "Doing Business in 2004", by the World Bank. It offers one of the first consistent, rigorous portraits of the costs of business regulations in poor countries. These often concern macroeconomic questions such as monetary policy and fiscal discipline, and the means of globalisation, such as free trade and foreign investment. Countries such as Haiti which, through colonialism, inherited laws from the French legal system are especially prone to red tape.