No magic numbers.

At its fifty-first session, the General Assembly received from the Secretary-General a report on the implementation of the Declaration on International Economic Cooperation, adopted in 1990, and the International Development Strategy for the Fourth United Nations Development Decade, adopted the same year. These are the "policy concerns" reflected in that report.

The first half of the 1990s has been characterized by a number of idiosyncratic trends. Arguably the most important has been the increased globalization and liberalization of the world economy. The former has taken several forms. First, there is the fact that international trade has been growing at a rapid rate. In just five years, the total value of world merchandise exports increased from 13 per cent of gross world product in 1990 to 17 per cent in 1995.

Secondly, international capital flows have increased dramatically in the same five-year period. For example, foreign direct investment in developing countries more than tripled between 1990 and 1995. Thirdly, firms are becoming increasingly "internationalized", setting up branches wherever costs are lowest and often using multiple production sites to avoid non-tariff barriers and minimize production costs. Fourthly, regional trading arrangements or trading blocs continue to proliferate. Lending special significance to trade concerns is the fact that this is the first such assessment since the follow-up activities associated with the conclusion of the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations, in which developing countries played a pivotal role.

A second characteristic of the first half of the Fourth United Nations Development Decade has been the continuation of relatively high real interest rates in industrialized countries. While long-term rates have actually fallen since the 1980s, historically they remain at quite high levels - especially when compared to the post-Second World War period until the end of the 1970s.

A third notable feature has been a resurgence of faith in the efficacy of the market. Thus, in an increasing number of countries, free-market advocates have urged Governments to be non-interventionist and concentrate only on providing public goods and "getting the basics right". The latter means that Governments are tending to focus only on the provision of public goods - such as defence, infrastructure and basic education - while avoiding high tax rates, price controls or any other significant distortion of relative prices.

Fourthly, a new orthodoxy as to what constitutes an effective development policy has emerged. What is remarkable about this current vogue in economic development policy, which applies to both the developing economies and economies in transition, is the extent of convergence that has evolved as to what constitutes an "appropriate" or efficacious economic strategy. Termed the "Washington consensus", this list of policy desiderata emphasizes fiscal rectitude, undistorted prices and limited government intervention.

However, in the light of the disparate experiences of developing countries in the first half of the Decade, it has become clear that there can be no such universal policy panacea. Moreover, what needs to be appraised at this juncture is not so much the outcome of countries' development policies, but the efforts being undertaken by them, and by developed countries and the international community on their behalf. The reason for this focus is that development policies, by definition, are long-run initiatives. The five-year period under review is thus too short a time-span in which to see final results. By the same reasoning, mid-Decade is too early for a definitive evaluation.

What is clear is that exogenous factors have both helped and hindered development efforts. Furthermore, initial conditions differed among countries. In addition, the policies pursued by developing countries have differed dramatically. Some have followed the tenets of the "Washington consensus" conscientiously. Others have had "stop-go" policies. Development strategies have thus differed greatly and their eventual outcomes are far from predictable. The one certainty is that "success" or "failure" cannot be expressed by one magic number, such as gross national product per capita. Development is far too rich and complex a process to be described by such a simplistic indicator.