New Perspectives on Trade and Development

Abstract

THE first meeting of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 1964 marked a turning point in relations between poor and rich countries. As we approach second conference, now scheduled to convene in New Delhi early in 1968, it is fitting to assess impact of UNCTAD on thought and policy with respect to trade prob lems of low-income countries. The first UNCTAD dramatized a salient fact about de velopment process?namely, that sluggish increase in poorer countries' capacity to import had become a principal con straint on their economic growth. But conference went far beyond a diagnosis of problem and gave expression to some basic policy implications and prescriptions, mainly in form of measures to be adopted by advanced countries to increase foreign-exchange receipts of less developed countries. Furthermore, conference set up institutional machinery de signed to exert continuous pressure on rich countries to find ways of meeting needs of poorer countries. Today, not quite three years after conclusion of 1964 conference, policies of rich countries are being subjected to a steady pounding in a formidable array of international or ganizations operating under aegis of UNCTAD: con ference itself which is a plenary body of more than 120 countries; a 55-nation Trade and Development Board which acts as an ex ecutive organ between meetings of conference; and numerous more specialized committees, subcommittees, working parties and expert groups, all serviced by a permanent secretariat of several hundred people. In 1966 scarcely a week went by when one of these UNCTAD bodies was not in session. Talk is cheap. And one can well understand frustration re flected in a recent statement by U Thant, Secretary-General of United Nations, when he lamented the slow rate of progress on virtually every recommendation of first UNCTAD Con ference, even those adopted unanimously.1