New paper on third development strategy called for.

New paper on third development strategy called for

A proposal that a new paper on the review and appraisal of the International Development Strategy for the Third United Nations Development Decade was made at the conclusion of the first half of a resumed session of the Committee on the Review and Appraisal of the Implementation of the Strategy. The Committee's Chairman was to be asked to formulate the paper as a possible basis for the Committee's future work.

The Committee also decided to recommend that its resumed session meet again in September. The Committee met from 6 to 14 May at Headquarters to assess progress made towards achieving the Strategy's goals and consider policy measures needed to further those goals.

At the meeting's outset, Committee Chairman Kenneth K.S. Dadzie (Ghana), said that some developments in the global environment and in the policy perceptions of major developed market economies posed an important new challenge to the work of the Committee. A year before, concern had centred on the pace and breadth of the recovery, but current concern had turned to the requirements for transition to long-term growth for all countries.

There was also disquiet, he said, about the timing and repercussions of a possible slow-down in economic activity and considerable uneasiness about prevailing patterns of exchange rates and trade and budget imbalances in major developed market economies.

International bank lending to developing countries had further declined and the burden of debt service had increased, he said. Austerity measures had inflicted heavy political and social costs on many developing countries, while at the same time, increasing emphasis was being placed by donor countries on improved domestic management and the role of the market mechanisms in developing countries.

Although these developments challenged the work of the Committee, said Mr. Dadzie, they also suggested that there was an overriding mutual interest in collective action to sustain a healthy recovery and to forestall another, deeper recession, whose social costs and disruptive consequences could only be contemplated with deep apprehension.

Restore real resources

Shuaib Yolah, Under-Secretary-General for International Economic and Social Affairs, said there was an urgent need to restore the flow of real resources to developing countries, strengthen commodity prices, liberalize world trade and improve functioning of the international monetary and financial system.

The setbacks of the first half of the Decade, he continued, had not only pushed developing countries back to a lower level of development but had placed them on a lower growth path for the remainder of the Decade. The deteriorated outlook underlined the urgency for an intensification of the policy measures contained in the Strategy.

Despite past commitments, he said, there was little evidence of a convergence on the specific international policy measures necessary for the accelerated economic growth and social development envisaged by the Strategy. An essential first step was to narrow the wide differences on the obstacles to the reactivation of the development process.

New text called for

Following informal meetings, it was decided that a new text dealing with the review and implementation of the Strategy should be drawn up by the Chairman. All speakers supported the request of the Group of 77 for such a text. Several stressed that the document should be brief and that it should be made available as soon as possible.

Egypt, on behalf of the Group of 77, said the new paper should not ignore measures in different sectors of the Strategy or the linkage between them and should be of a nature that would lead to political endorsement. Its point of departure should be the reaffirmation of the Strategy's objectives and goals.

The Soviet Union said that the draft should deal with reasons for the failure to implement the Strategy and proposals to bring about its implementation.

The United States raised the issue of the cost involved in having a further session of the Committee and said it joined the consensus to ask for another paper with the condition that the paper be shorter rather than longer, and be seen sooner rather than later.

Background: The Committee was established in 1982 to review how the Strategy for the Third Development decade was being implemented. That Decade was proclaimed by the General Assembly (resolution 35/36) on 5 December 1982, to promote efforts to bridge the gap between industrialized and developing countries.

The implementation of the International Strategy includes the enhancement of the flow of financial resources to developing countries on conditions attuned to their development aims and economic circumstances, and calls for a "rapid and substantial" increase in official development assistance by all developed countries; achievement of a system of trade based on a dynamic pattern of comparative advantage; and improved access of developing countries to technology (see UN Chronicle, No. 4, 1984).

Committee membership is open to all States. At an organizational session in 1983, the Committee elected Mr. Dadzie (Ghana) as its Chairman; Konstantin Kolev (Bulgari), Oscar de Rojas (Venezuela) and Per Jodahl (Sweden) as Vice-Chairmen; and Yousif Gewaily (Qatar) as Rapporteur. At the resumed session Krister Kumlin (Sweden) was elected Vice-Chairman to replace Per Jodahl.