INDIA PLEDGES $100,000 FOR LDC FUND

12:18 PM Nov 18, 1996

INDIA PLEDGES $100,000 FOR LDC FUND
New Delhi, Nov.14 (TWN/Mahesh Prasad) -- India has committed a sum of $100,000 to a special Trust Fund created by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs).

This was announced by India's Commerce Secretary, Mr.Tejendra Khanna, at a press conference, held by the UNCTAD Secretary General, Mr.Rubens Ricupero, at the end of his three-day visit, to India.

India, Mr.Ricupero told the press conference, would be "the first country to pledge its contribution." UNCTAD, he added, would also like "to see the growing participation of Indian experts in the process of development training of specialised personnel in foreign trade."

Ricupero said UNCTAD had just developed a complete diploma course in foreign trade. The Indian Institute of Foreign Trade "will be our counterpart in India", he said.

The fund, whose total corpus is expected to be US$5 million will help UNCTAD carry out further analytical and field work on the problems faced by LDCs in coping with the challenges posed by globalization and liberalization of the world economic systems."

"The Trust Fund being set up by UNCTAD attracted wide support from traditional and non-traditional donors at the recently concluded annual meeting of the Trade and Development Board. In this context, India and the UN will explore means to implement regular cooperation involving assistance to LDC's in South Asia and elsewhere," a UN release issued at the press conference said.

The idea of such a trust fund was mooted by Ricupero in April (when he announced the restructuring of the Secretariat). Some OECD countries have made some informal commitments to contribute to such a trust fund, but these are still the subject of informal discussions at UNCTAD.

On his visit to India, Ricupero said UNCTAD was undergoing a new renaissance phase after "the most important reform in the history of our organisation," and was "on the eve of very important international events," he thought it appropriate to consult Indian authorities, "because India was second to none in supporting our organisation."

During his visit, Ricupero called on Prime Minister Deve Gowda and External Affairs Minister, Mr.I.K.Gujral and lunched with the Commerce Minister, Mr.B.B.Ramaiah. The talks he had showed identify of views on the handling of upcoming issues on the international agenda.

Speaking on the theme "Is there life after globalisation? Prospects for development in the twenty first century," while delivering the prestigious S.Ranganathan Memorial lecture here, Ricupero said that those who presented globalization as a threat or bogeyman, and who spoke of the "inevitability" of job insecurity, were robbing people of their right to faith in the future.

"The economic system is not fixed like the planetary system," he declared. "It is a product of human choices and values. We just have to choose the right values. And competition - a `game', like any other, which requires rules and arbiters -- must be put into the balance scales with other values".