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TWN
Info Service on Finance and Development (Feb12/02) Under the title, "Thinking Development: Three Decades of the Trade and Development Report", former UNCTAD officials, economists, academics and current diplomats spoke of the TDR and its contribution to independent thinking and exploration of ideas for development, often running counter to the viewpoints and policies promoted by the centers and their international organizations, like the Bretton Woods Institutions and the old GATT and now the WTO controlled by them. In a presentation dripping with sarcasm at the treatment that the TDR issues over the years got at the hands of the "mainstream" economists at some multilateral institutions and in the press, the former Secretary-General of UNCTAD (1995-2004), Mr. Rubens Ricupero, said there was "a collective attitude of denial ... studied posturing of deliberate silence, of avoiding to acknowledge the very existence, not to say the possible interest, of a differing view". Ricupero began his presentation with the remark: "Ninety-four times did Pope John Paul II ask for forgiveness for the sins and crimes committed by Christians over two thousand years of History. Would it be too much to expect that some multilateral economic organizations admit their share of responsibility for the current financial crisis and ask forgiveness for the terrible advice they gave countries in recent years?" (See separate article.) The TDR owes its origins perhaps to some "brain-storming" meetings in late 1979 over the outcomes of two major global meetings of that year -- the five-week session of UNCTAD-V at Manila (1979) where key inter-dependent issues of development and trade, money and finance and a whole gamut of related issues were discussed, and the subsequent Non-Aligned Summit at Havana. The two meetings took place at a time when the world economy was facing some of the most difficult issues of that time in the aftermath of the first two oil "shocks", and the very lax and wrong-headed monetary and fiscal policies in the North (leading to the later Paul Volcker interest rate shocks). But the western media took no notice at all, and what little was published was at best peripheral, and what passed for "human interest". While UNCTAD-V itself was discussing and negotiating serious issues and possible ways forward out of the global economic crisis of that time, the western "mainstream" media not only ignored it, but engaged in some scurrilous writing too. One major transnational news agency carried reports splashed in the western media about delegates turning up for a morning session, "bleary eyed and sleepy", with the agency providing a background of sorts about "Manila and its bars, bar-girls and night scene". (In fact, the delegates had been negotiating the previous night at a meeting that went on to about 4.00 am next morning, when it was adjourned to reassemble at 10.00 am). Another leading US newspaper had a story about Ministers and heads of delegation arriving for the meetings in chauffer-driven Mercedes, while the head of the US delegation was only using a US-manufactured embassy vehicle. What the correspondent of the paper of record omitted to add was that six months earlier, the IMF and World Bank had held their annual jamboree meetings in Manila (that unlike UN institutions that require the host government to meet the costs, the Fund and Bank met all the expenses, and that the import of the Mercedes Benz cars had been financed by the World Bank, with the stipulation that after their meeting, the Philippines government would sell them to local tour operators for a tourist limousine service!). There was little or no report in the western media on the substance of discussions or outcome at the conference. Even Conference documents, and the secretariat reports on various issues had been ignored. Only the Inter Press Service (for which the writer and three others were reporting from Manila) was carrying daily detailed reports, and the Nyon-based International Foundation for Development Alternatives (IFDA), subscribing to the IPS, tore off the teletype copies, photocopied them without any editing, and made them available in Geneva to Group of 77 delegations and the UNCTAD Secretariat. At a brain-storming meeting of key UNCTAD and UN officials, some G77 leaders and some from progressive and "like-minded" European governments, some of the ideas that came out included a view that UNCTAD, as an organ of the UN General Assembly and the main economic forum, should be able to present every year its view of the global political economy, and in particular that of the developing countries and articulate their problems and needs. While this was being done in the secretariat reports on the agenda items for its main bodies and committees, as well as the meetings of the Trade and Development Board, and the statements and remarks of the UNCTAD Secretary-General, it would be useful to have the various ideas, policies and strategies assembled together and published in one document. Such a publication should be able to articulate an alternative view of development than the project-oriented paradigm of the World Bank that two years earlier had began bringing out its flashily-produced World Development Report. Perhaps some such idea had already been in the thinking of UNCTAD's leadership, and the views at the brainstorming meeting merely acted as a catalyst. Anyhow, this ultimately resulted in the publication in 1981 of the Trade and Development Report -- though perhaps inevitable in an international organization after much internal debate about its remit, perspectives and how and who of it. Ultimately, the flagship report was located in the then Money and Finance division -- which dealt with a range of issues and their interdependence. The director of that division, Gerry Arsenis, an eminent Greek economist, was the lead author. The other suggestion or idea that came from the brainstorming meeting was the need for developing countries and their diplomats and negotiators to get information about talks in UN fora (without having to depend on the western media). A foreign minister of a west European socialist government said at the meeting that he would be willing to contribute to the expenses, if he could get every morning on his table, a piece of paper with nothing more than merely the documents issued every day on economic issues in the UN fora (with title and document numbers, and just a para or two on what it was about). So much was lacking even for rich countries in terms of information. The idea was quickly translated by IFDA undertaking, in cooperation with the Inter Press Service Third World news agency, the publication of SUNS, a daily bulletin, prepared and published in an artisanal way, with news and analysis of current issues and discussions and negotiations from the perspective of the developing countries. The first TDR, issued towards end of August 1981, covered a range of issues and subjects. As reported in the SUNS (Nos. 351, 352, 353 and 354), they included: * UNCTAD assessment and warning that the international economic environment facing the Third World countries at the beginning of the 1980s was "highly unfavourable, and continuance of current macro-economic policies of the OECD economies would mean continued stagflation in the immediate future"; * Need for a new development paradigm taking explicit account of the fact that issues concerning management of the world economy on the one hand, and long-term development objectives on the other, are intermingled; * Gains of development have not been shared equitably, within and among countries, and a major problem is "distribution of income", without which sustained growth is impossible; [This issue, long ignored, has now come to the forefront, even in the major centres, as evidenced by the "occupy movements" of the deprived 99%, and the stratospheric super-affluence of the 1% at the top]. * The transnational corporations (TNCs) and their oligopolistic activities have led to increasing rigid price behaviour in the markets, and thus a source of inflationary pressure, difficult to handle with traditional tools of macro-economic management; * TNCs now dominate industrial, trading, banking, service and retail sectors at the global level, with resulting influence extending over a major proportion of world trade. [Little did TDR-1981 authors, and the UNCTAD leadership, know that by the second-half of the 1990s, a division of UNCTAD would end up promoting the interests of TNCs, through its World Investment Reports!]; * The Third World must take special measures to meet high cereal deficits under conditions of accelerated growth, and adopt alternative paradigms to accelerate growth and development, rather than depend on growth and increased demand in OECD economies; * Enhanced economic cooperation among developing countries (ECDC), and that ECDC was central for fast growth in the developing world. Two years later, at UNCTAD-VI in Belgrade, Secretary-General Gamani Corea decided, as part of events to mark the 20th anniversary of the founding of UNCTAD, to interest young economic students and academics in developing countries in such global issues, and have an essay prize competition in developing countries, with four winners (one from each developing region) to be invited to attend the 20th anniversary event and the Trade and Development Board meetings. The competition, announced through the UN information centres, brought a large number of entries, with a four-member jury (of which the writer was one), with UNCTAD's deputy secretary-general Jan Pronk, to select the winners. The jury found that not one of the essayists had actually referred to the TDRs, but only IMF and World Bank reports. On making enquiries, it turned out that while UNCTAD was publishing the TDRs, it could not be found in any of the UN information centres. The jury recommended, and Pronk promptly acted on it, that UNCTAD send at its expense TDR copies to the UN information centres, and also provide it on request to various economic faculties of universities in the developing countries -- an outreach programme of sorts. (* Chakravarthi Raghavan, Editor Emeritus of the SUNS, contributed this comment.)
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