8:14 AM Mar 26, 1996

UNITED NATIONS: UNCTAD SECRETARIAT RESTRUCTURING SOON

Geneva 26 Mar (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) would emerge out of next month's ninth session in Midrand (near Johannsesburg, South Africa) as one of the models of an international institution of the 21st century, the Secretary-General of UNCTAD, Mr. Rubens Ricupero, told journalists Monday.

Speaking and answering questions at the annual lunch of the UN Correspondents Association, Mr. Ricupero said that he hoped to announce over the next few weeks a restructuring of the secretariat, with its current eight or nine divisions and units reorganised in four clusters for a more efficient organization, and one that would make a difference in terms of the concrete and pragmatic service it could provide to member-countries.

Even as Ricupero was speaking to correspondents, a Committee of the Whole of the Trade and Development, meeting in executive session, was struggling to evolve a pre-conference text for consideration and adoption at the Conference whose main theme "Growth and Sustainable Development in a Globalizing and Liberalizing World Economy."

The COW, chaired by the President of the Board, Mr. William Rossier of Switzerland, had split into two drafting groups to tackle a draft text running into 79 pages - studded with square brackets and alternative formulations about the substantive issues and work programmes and the technical assistance activities of the organization. The COW is working against a deadline of Friday 29th March.

A first version of the pre-conference text, was considered by the COW on 11 March, with both the developing and the developed countries and their various groups finding fault with one or another aspect and unwilling to use it as a basis for further negotiations and work.

But a second version, dated 15 March, appears to have fared no better, with many developing countries complaining that it reflected donor-driven technical assistance programme and activities and ignored many of their earlier criticisms and the output of their regional meetings.

A detailed discussion of that paper, and changes and amendments put forward by participants has resulted in a new 79-page text which was being tackled by two drafting groups.

Some developing country delegations said that progress was very slow and that unless the President of the Board, Mr. William Rossier and Ricupero took a personal hand over evolving a text and negotiations, it would be difficult for the COW to complete its work by this week.

Ricupero told the journalists that while the Conference had to decide on the programmes and priorities over the next four years, he was confident that the restructured secretariat would be able to function in an efficient manner and able to provide concrete and pragmatic service to its member-States.

The reorganized secretariat, would have

* one cluster dealing with international trade issues, trade policy, unctad's contribution in its role of complementarity with the WTO, and looking at various issues from the development perspective;

* a second cluster on investment, enterprise development and technology cluster focusing on investment issues, including analysis and promotion, promoting enterprise development and issues related to technology for development;

* a third cluster on Services infrastructure for development and efficiency and would aim at enabling developing countries and transition economies to develop internationally competitive and efficient services infrastructure, promoting trade efficiency, and trade-supporting services for small and medium-sized enterprise sectors, and analysing development dimensions and needs of developing countries in the emerging Global Information Infrastructure; and

* a fourth cluster on Globalization and Development which would focus on macro-economic analysis and facilitate annual trade and development policy discussions, concentrating on specific issues of the globalization process, successful development experiences and policy options for countries.

Ricupero noted that even in the industrialized countries now there were differing perspectives on the globalization and liberalization process and the impact of globalization.

The UNCTAD head said macro-economic analysis would remain the basic component of UNCTAD's work and it would orient and influence the other activities. Macro-analysis and work would deal with problems and inter-relationships, but going beyond the work currently being done in UNCTAD's Global Interdependence Division.

While the other clusters of the secretariat would be dealing with various subject from a micro-perspective, in terms of the macro- work in UNCTAD, Ricupero hoped to get a whole range of research and intellectual capacity to be brought to bear to understand the relationships between micro-, macro- issues and arrive at a concrete outcome, guided by the development perspective.

Ricupero said he also intended to give more emphasis to UNCTAD outputs that could help policy-makers, in the developing and developed world, to have concrete material before them to be able to make decisions.

On Commodities, Ricupero said that apart from issues of commodity trade, it was his intention to go beyond and look at environmental aspects of natural resource management. The secretariat, he said, was doing some work for e.g. in helping people to deal with the biodiversity convention and had come up with some concrete instruments to translate into economic reality what had been agreed to in the Convention.

UNCTAD would also be dealing with issues of risk management in commodity trade, diversification in commodity development, and was already in contact with the Managing Director of the Common Fund on joint programmes, with the Fund financing some of these activities.

Asked about the US role, Ricupero said that the United States delegations was actively engaged in the preparations for UNCTAD-IX. The US had earlier been speaking about need to avoid duplication. But this was also his own concern and interest.

Asked about the increasing challenge from developing countries in the WTO to the western market-model being pushed on them, Ricupero referred to the recent conference in Kuala Lumpur, with Japanese financing, to examine the development experiences of the successful East Asian and South-East Asian countries.

This seminar and the activities related to it were a part of a more ambitious programme in UNCTAD to examine successful development experiences, not merely in theoretical terms, but to examine the different policies, strategies and instruments used, see what had been the experience of the countries which had succeeded and see whether others could adapt these for their own development.

The examination would involve some controversial questions such as a greater or less active role for the State, the present or lack of an industrial policy, protection for industrialization etc.

"We intend to pursue this type of study from an empirical point of view -- concrete experiences and exchange of experiences among developing countries," Ricupero said, adding, "Of course we have to see to what degree some of these experiences can be applied in the post-Uruguay Round trading system and whether the concrete results of the Round had restricted the possibilities of countries applying some of the policies."