New paper on third development strategy called for.

• Position: Economic development in developing countries

New paper on third development strategy called for

A proposal that a new paper on the review and appraisal of the International Development Strategy for the Third United Nations Development Decade was made at the conclusion of the first half of a resumed session of the Committee on the Review and Appraisal of the Implementation of the Strategy. The Committee's Chairman was to be asked to formulate the paper as a possible basis for the Committee's future work.

The Committee also decided to recommend that its resumed session meet again in September. The Committee met from 6 to 14 May at Headquarters to assess progress made towards achieving the Strategy's goals and consider policy measures needed to further those goals.

At the meeting's outset, Committee Chairman Kenneth K.S. Dadzie (Ghana), said that some developments in the global environment and in the policy perceptions of major developed market economies posed an important new challenge to the work of the Committee. A year before, concern had centred on the pace and breadth of the recovery, but current concern had turned to the requirements for transition to long-term growth for all countries.

There was also disquiet, he said, about the timing and repercussions of a possible slow-down in economic activity and considerable uneasiness about prevailing patterns of exchange rates and trade and budget imbalances in major developed market economies.

International bank lending to developing countries had further declined and the burden of debt service had increased, he said. Austerity measures had inflicted heavy political and social costs on many developing countries, while at the same time, increasing emphasis was being placed by donor countries on improved domestic management and the role of the market mechanisms in developing countries.

Although these developments challenged the work of the Committee, said Mr. Dadzie, they also suggested that there was an overriding mutual interest in collective action to sustain a healthy recovery and to forestall another, deeper recession, whose social costs and disruptive consequences could only be contemplated with deep apprehension.

Restore real resources

Shuaib Yolah, Under-Secretary-General for International Economic and Social Affairs, said there was an urgent need to restore the flow of real resources to developing countries, strengthen commodity prices, liberalize world trade and improve functioning of the international monetary and financial...