Reform of world trade urged by U.N. group

Press, 6 September 1984, Page 25

Reform of world trade urged by U.N. group

NZPA-Reuter Geneva The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (U.N.C.T.A.D.) has called for a reform of world trade and how it is financed to ensure economic growth opportunities for all States, including developing countries.

In its annual report on trade and development, U.N.C.T.A.D. said that lagging Third World economies would not be revived as a mere by-product of economic recovery in industrial countries.

“Prudent policy planning calls for an urgent examination of how the trade and payments system may be reordered and restructured so as to promote better economic performance of national economies,” it said.

It proposed no concrete solutions, but said that what was required was “an alternative approach,” linking trade and financial problems to those of employment and development. A logical extension of the 1944 Bretton Woods agreements, which set up the post-war international monetary system, would be “The establishment... of a development consensus which would recognise that rapid development in developing countries is an imperative both for the developing countries and for the proper functioning of the world economy as a whole.” U.N.C.T.A.D. officials said the Bretton Woods arrangements concentrated on the objective of full employment, rather than on rapid

development, whereas the U.N.C.T.A.D. document advocated closely linking both aims.

The report said that while, industrial countries were emerging from the worst recession since World War 11, many developing nations were “still submerged in a crisis that brought development to a halt and created severe social problems.” Recovery was expected to spread “exceedingly slowly” to developing countries, it said.

Higher interest rates, stagnant export earnings and the rising dollar meant that debtor countries could not service their debt without what U.N.C.T.A.D. called unacceptably large reductions in their essential imports.