Human development in Malaysia has been inching at a snail's pace for the past decade, at least according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The country was ranked 61 out of 177 countries surveyed in the UNDP 2005 Human Development Index (HDI) released today.

In his speech at the launching of the report in Kuala Lumpur, UN resident coordinator Dr Richard Leete said Malaysia appeared rooted in the same position for the past 10 years.

This time around, Malaysia missed moving up the ranks by a fraction as its HDI value stood at 0.796 while the UNDP threshold for high human development is fixed at 0.8.

Launched in 1990, the HDI is a composite index that measures the average achievement in a country in three basic dimensions of human development - a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent standard of living.

The long and healthy life is measured by life expectancy at birth while knowledge is assessed by the adult literacy and the combined gross enrolment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary schools.

The decent standard of living is measured by GDP per capita in purchasing power parity US dollar.

The report was delivered to the world leaders today through the missions of the 191 member states of the UN in preparation for its World Summit slated next week in New York.

Meanwhile, Leete said Malaysia's HDI score marked variations according to the different states.

"Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Selangor have high human development, such that Kuala Lumpur's ranking is equivalent to the 36th in the world.

"Conversely, Kelantan and Sabah's HDI scores do not reach the level of the top countries. Addressing these spatial inequalities remain a challenge," he added

Kuala Lumpur garnered a HDI value of 0.861, Penang 0.828, Selangor 0.817 while Kelantan's was at 0.723 and Sabah 0.729.

Norway topped the HDI, followed by Iceland and Australia while Niger, Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso were ranked at the bottom.

A fair report

The launch was officiated by Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz.

To a question from the floor if the methodology of the index is questionable as Malaysia's ranking should be higher, the minister said the country 'is fine' with its HDI.

"We are not competing with other countries but to improve our own country...I think the report is a fair comment, we are not going to complain but will try harder to get better," he said.

In a press conference later, Nazri said the government cannot express anger with all international indexes, for example the corruption perception index (CPI), which put Malaysia in a bad light.

However, he said he believes the UN agency has no reason and agenda to deliberately place Malaysia at a low rank.