United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) after new Delhi
- Author(s):
- Parliamentary Assembly
- Origin
- Assembly debate on 28 January 1969 (21st Sitting) (see Doc. 2518, report of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Development). Text adopted by the Assembly on 28 January 1969 (21st Sitting).
1. The Assembly,
2. Considering that alongside with continued and increased financial aid and technical assistance the developing countries require to be assisted in their efforts to expand their exports to the industrialised countries as well as among themselves,
3. Regrets that the 2nd UNCTAD Conference in New Delhi in 1968, as the 1st Conference in Geneva in 1964, did not achieve significant practical results in terms of improved prospects for the developing countries' exports of goods and invisibles, either in quantitative terms or in terms of prices
4. Believes that the institutional machinery and working methods of UNCTAD were partly responsible for this, and welcomes the reforms of UNCTAD machinery and methods agreed at the 7th Session of the Trade and Development Board in September 1968 as a good beginning towards improving UNCTAD's possibilities of solving concrete problems and negotiating agreed policies ;
5. Observes, however, that the success of these improvements and indeed the future of UNCTAD as an organisation, will depend on the political will to make them work in a spirit of realistic and constructive compromise and that this will require the elaboration of negotiable priorities within both of the main groupings ;
6. Urges all member governments of UNCTAD to concentrate their efforts on the main issues where practical results of real value to the developing countries can be achieved ;
7. Urges member governments in the first place to proceed as rapidly as possible with the proposed scheme for a system of non-reciprocal, temporary preferences in favour of raw materials, foodstuffs, semifinished and manufactured goods, and processed farm products of the developing countries ; to resume discussions with a view to setting up a Supplementary Financing Scheme ; to increase their financial aid efforts as rapidly as possible when they have not already done so, in accordance with the new target figure of 1% of GNP agreed by them at New Delhi ;
8. Believes that in the interest of the developing countries themselves, more attention should be paid in future to achieving optimum use of aid resources by linking aid to the economic and social performance of beneficiary countries and by according priority aid to countries whose governments make serious and consistent efforts to achieve economic and social progress.
