7:27 AM Feb 26, 1996

FINAL PREPARATORY PROCESS FOR UNCTAD-IX

Geneva 26 Feb (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- The Trade and Development Board of UNCTAD began Monday the final stage of preparations for the Ninth Session of the Conference, with the financial crisis facing the United Nations and its bodies focusing attention mainly on the organizational and institutional issues, with the substantive questions appearing to take a backseat at this point.

The Conference is due to meet at Gallaghar Estate, in Midrand, South Africa from 27 April to 11 May. It is expected to be opened by the UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on 27 April, and the President of South Africa, Mr. Nelson Mandela, will deliver an inaugural address. Also to speak at the opening ceremony is Mr. Juan Manuel Santos, Foreign Trade Minister of Colombia where UNCTAD-VIII was held.

UNCTAD-IX will be chaired by South Africa's Minister for Trade and Industry, Mr. Trevor Manuel. The Conference will begin a general debate on 30 April, with a statement by UNCTAD Secretary-General, Rubens Ricupero.

Following up on various regional preparatory meetings, the Board met in executive session and converted itself into a Committee of the Whole which will meet from 26 February to 29 March, to prepare a pre-negotiated text on the topics before UNCTAD-IX. The COW is to meet from 26-29 February, from 11-15 March and 25-29 March when it will agree on a pre-negotiated text on the four topics before UNCTAD-IX.

The four agreed topics are: Development policies and strategies in an increasingly inter-dependent world economy in the 1990s and beyond; Promoting international trade as an instrument for development in the post-Uruguay Round world; Promoting enterprise development and competitiveness in developing countries and transition economies; and the Future work of UNCTAD in accordance with its mandate; institutional implications.

But the Executive Session of the Board, where UNCTAD Secretary-General Rubens Ricupero, formally introduced his report to the Conference, and the earlier introductory remarks of the Board President, Amb. William Rossier of Switzerland, focused on the acute financial crisis facing the UN and the search for reforms now under way throughout the international organizations, the UN and UNCTAD, and the need for streamlining the secretariat as well as the intergovernmental machinery of UNCTAD.

Ricupero said that while he had outlined some preliminary views on the substantive questions and the future work programme of UNCTAD, he would at a later stage of the COW, and in the light of views of the membership, put forward his own ideas on the substantive questions and the priority for the work programme that the Conference should set.

The COW is to meet in an informal plenary Tuesday to hear Ricupero and his ideas for streamlining the secretariat and the intergovernmental machinery.

Ricupero's prepared text on his report was circulated to the Board, while he himself focused on what he viewed as the "new situation" -- as he put it, "the period of particularly acute crisis and search for reform in the international organizations as a whole, in the UN and at UNCTAD".

UNCTAD, he said, was the only part of the UN which was going to have a major conference in the midst of this crisis.

Last year, at the time of the 50th anniversary session of the UN, all participants -- Heads of States or heads of delegations who took the floor in New York at the General Assembly -- had made pleas for reform of the system, with some concentrating on particular aspects. But everyone had expressed their firm commitment to the need for organizational reforms.

This process was now going on in New York -- with no less than five processes under way in various areas.

The financial crisis had inevitably implications for the normal life of the organization and the reform process itself.

But as UNCTAD prepared itself for its four-yearly conference, it was an unique opportunity for member-states to meet this challenge and a very difficult test.

UNCTAD had become a sort of test of the earnestness and capacity of the international community not only to reform itself, but pronounce on the multilateral organization and reforms in international relations.

It would be a test because the Conference would have the power to take the necessary decisions and the basic ideas it would like to convey. The Conference had never faced a situation as now and "it is not business as usual" and it would be a test for the organization and member-states as well.

There was the issue of responsibility of UNCTAD itself, his own responsibility and that of his colleagues in the secretariat who would be judged by their "capacity and willingness to reform ourselves, our capacity to make sacrifices, to be able to think about a new internal, organizational structure for our work."

On that point the secretariat was ready to be judged, Ricupero said. "We have prepared some ideas in this respect and we will take full responsibility for the decisions we can taken in areas within our competence."

There was the second issue of willingness and capacity of the member-countries on the directions to be given to the work of UNCTAD -- a process which the Board and the COW was starting on.

"We should decide on the work programme of UNCTAD -- the ideas that we could take to South Africa and the decisions we could collectively take on them," Ricupero.

In his report to the Conference he had presented the outcome of the collective thinking within the secretariat -- on the future evolution of the world economy and the trading system and how they envisaged the future work of the organization.

It was up to the member-states to examine these ideas and arrive at some conclusions.

"What we have to have is a more focused work programme and for that we need to be selective and have a few priorities where UNCTAD can make a meaningful contribution".

While in his report he had outlined some areas of activity, he had refrained from mentioning any priorities or the subjects on which to concentrate. And while the secretariat was ready to be judged by its actions, but he would prefer to be judged for being "bold, rather than cautious".

After hearing the views of countries in the debate, he would like to come back and go beyond his formal role and try to present his own views on priorities for action in the world programme.

But in doing so, he would focus on the role that had been accepted in the Cartagena Commitment, namely, the search for partnership and a consensus-building role.

Any consensus would require compromises and, as the Norwegian Prime Minister put it during her recent visit to South Africa its recent experience was one characterized by "an uncompromising search for compromise, an uncompromising commitment or willingness to look for compromises".

Consensus-building in UNCTAD would require "a position of balance" and no single group "should try to impose a unilateral or uni-dimensional perspective of the world" and of the mission of this organization."

This applied not merely to UNCTAD, but to the whole process of UN which could be successful only if it was really based on a search for compromise.

Ricupero said that he wanted to introduce a process of stream-lining of the secretariat, "a new managerial culture", a process of real accountability by programme-managers.

In other areas, where the final authority lay with the member-states, to make UNCTAD an effective organization its intergovernmental machinery must be reformed, reducing the number of issues to those on which UNCTAD could make a meaningful impact on Development.

In recent discussions at the TDB, there was a broad consensus to advance in this direction.

In regard to those parts of the machinery that was less intergovernmental, and more operational, the final beneficiaries of UNCTAD's work had been largely absent.

"There is an acute need to involve the real actors of development, notably the private sector both at the level of large corporations but also small and medium sized enterprises and the non-governmental organizations."

The participation of the civil society, both of the developed and developing nations would help in deciding the priorities and the revitalization of thinking of these topics.

In this regard, Ricupero said he would make a concrete proposal for an innovative approach to the financing of participation of civil society of the developing countries. It would require a radical and conceptual change in the way they operate, and would be the first step to make the UN and UNCTAD relevant to the 21st century.

The third element to the reform process related to the implications of the financial crisis of the UN as a whole. While they could discuss it at the informal meeting on Tuesday, it was an issue where solutions lay largely beyond the reach or capacity of the UNCTAD. But it would have serious and important implications on their capacity to carry out a successful conclusion to the process of reform.

In underlining the difficulties under way, Ricupero cited Machiavelli's writings four centuries ago: that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. For it engenders the enmity of all who will profit by the preservation of the old institution, but only the lukewarm support of those who would gain by the new one.

In line with the UNCTAD tradition, the regional groups of developing countries from Asia, Africa and Latin America have held ministerial meetings, and the Ministerial Declarations and Documents from these meetings were presented to the Board Monday morning.

Besides these meetings, a number of international encounters involving government representatives and NGOs have also taken place and the outcome of these will also be before the Board and UNCTAD-IX.

These include a meeting held in Switzerland on technical cooperation for trade and development in the face of globalization; a seminar on 'Environment, Competitiveness and trade: A Development Perspective' held in Helsinki, Finland and an international Round Table on 'Promotion of the Private sector and the Role of Government' held in Bonn; and an NGO consultation held in Geneva last November.

Other meetings now under way, and whose outcome will be fed into UNCTAD-IX include: a conference this week in Kuala Lumpur on 'East Asian development: Lessons for a new global environment"; a conference on 'Global capital flows in economic development', scheduled for 7-9 March near New York; and an expert meeting on "Technology: Partnership for capacity building and competitivity"

In a prepared text circulated to the Board Monday, Ricupero had said a major task of UNCTAD-IX would be to identify ways of maximising the developmental impact of globalization and liberalization while maximizing the dangers of instability and marginalization, particularly for LDCs and other structurally weak economies such as those in Africa. The main objective of UNCTAD would be to promote the integration of the developing countries into the mainstream of the world economy and in so doing enhance their development prospects.

The second area of concern, Ricupero's text said, was to promote international trade as an instrument for development in the post-Uruguay Round environment. The challenge was to assist developing countries to benefit fully from the trading opportunities arising from the agreements.

There was need to ensure effective implementation of the Uruguay Round results, especially in the areas of market access for goods and services of export interest to developing countries and countries in transition. The agreements left considerable margin for interpretation and an element of discretion in trade policies of countries. It was hence essential that countries, in particular major trading nations, implement their commitments and exercise restraints in application of trade remedies and safeguards.

There was also the need for measures to alleviate transitional costs. The commitments of the international community in this area had to be translated into concrete actions and UNCTAD-IX should contribute to this process in the light of specific proposals in the Secretary-General's Report to the Conference. A specific action programme of technical and financial assistance in this respect should be defined by UNCTAD-IX.

As for recent initiatives, in the context of preparations for the Singapore Ministerial meeting of the WTO, to extend multilateral disciplines to related areas of environment, investment, and competition policy, Ricupero said that these proposals for new multilateral disciplines were aspects of the broader question of implications of further extension of multilateral trade obligations into additional areas of domestic policy.

"This would imply global governance would be carried out within the framework of trade agreements. The challenge facing the consensus-building process is to ensure that the development implications of various approaches and scenarios are fully understood so that the interests of developing countries can be fully taken into account. UNCTAD-IX provides an excellent opportunity for examining some of these issues from the development perspective."

In the context of advances in information and communication technologies, and in transport, efficiency of international trade transactions as well as access to global trade-related information flows and networks, had become increasingly important factors for countries and firms to seize opportunities in trade liberalization. Trade efficiency capacities of countries could be enhanced through improvements in trade-related service infrastructures and through trade-facilitation practices. These would require appropriate technical support measures on the part of the international community. Concrete policy measures are also needed to address the negative consequences of commodity-dependence affecting in particular Africa. These measures were needed in the three main areas of reduction of instability and risks faced by commodity export-dependent developing countries; enhancing commodity diversification; and promotion of efficient management of natural resources.

In terms of the future work in UNCTAD, the report said that while ultimate responsibility for political and macro-economic conditions for stability and progress lay with each governments, these efforts often depended on the external economic environment, more so in a liberalizing and globalizing world economy.

The external environment must provide open and competitive access to the basic elements of sustainable development: markets, financing, investment, technology and financial and technical assistance and these elements were the fundamental priorities for UNCTAD's work.

UNCTAD's research and analysis would aim at enabling member state, particularly the developing countries, how these elements interact in an increasingly globalized economy. But analysis and conceptual explanations were not enough. They should help formulate policies and actions for promoting sustainable development.

The analytical work in UNCTAD had therefore to be action-oriented in two complementary directions:

The first was to contribute from a development perspective to the pareparation of a multilateral agenda for future negotiations on trade, investment, competition, environment and technology -- work to be pursued in a cooperative and complimentary manner with that of other international institutions, among them the WTO.

The second line of activities should focus on practical tools to enhance capacities of developing countries to seize the opportunities for growth and development and integrate into the world economy. The goals should be to make the best possible opportunities created in trade to promote investments and provide technical assistance to governments. It was his intention to ensure that wherever possible such activities would lead to action-oriented instruments such as handbooks, guidelines, and model laws to enable policy makers to have practical tools at their disposal.