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Jaswant enunciates plan for New Economic Order at G-77 meet

Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Jaswant Singh has spelt out a seven-point strategy to help shape a more benign and equitable international economic order.

Speaking at the ministerial meeting of Group of 77 at the United Nations, Singh said there was a positive realisation that islands of prosperity could not flourish in the developed world if developing country markets contracted, their growth rates declined and they were in the throes of instability in this age of true inter-dependence.

The seven elements in the new strategy recommended by Jaswant Singh are as follows:

One, bring back the focus on inter-governmental action and the concept of international public good into global economic policy-making with an attempt to make sound national governance and the role of international corporations complementary to it.

Two, persuade our developed country partners to factor our specific development dilemmas and special requirements into global economic policy-making.

Three, revive the traditional development co-operation agenda consisting of fundamental issues of concessional resource transfers, favourable technology transfers and special and differential treatment in trade to developing countries, blending this with the new agenda and demands of liberalisation.

Four, continuously evaluate globalisation and its processes and identify ways of effective and just governance of globalisation, seeking wide-ranging overhaul of systems and institutions and ensure involvement of developing countries in decision-making and benchmark setting.

Five, put in place necessary safeguards to help developing countries protect their food, energy and social security and their access to international markets and finance at all times without being held hostage to globalisation or whims of developed countries.

Six, make our intervention for reinvigoration of development co-operation and sound international global governance, issue and event specific, present it in a positive spirit of engagement, mutual benefit and practicability.

And seven, affirm the virtues of the diversity of development paradigms within the unity of globalisation and of broad banding'' of what constitutes sound macro fundamentals in different countries and situations.

Singh said the challenge for G-77 and for any north-south dialogue was to ensure that more and more people were economically empowered and become at least basic consumers. Also, welfare gains as much as efficiency gains were key global governance issues carrying with them environmental and social implications of profound import. They were crucial for the future of democracy.

He also underlined the urgent need for some global, objective and balanced mechanism for monitoring, surveillance and disciplining of financial and currency markets. At present, he noted, trillions of dollars crossing international borders every day were accountable to no one even though they brought with great volatility of exchange and interest rates and affected the real economy.

''We must insist on we learning the lesson collectively that the international monetary and financial systems cannot be left to spontaneous market forces alone,'' he said. The G-77 must come up with proposals for reform of the international monetary and financial architecture, of the regulatory policies of creditor and borrowing countries and corporates as well as of faulty and biased credit rating agencies.

Singh also called on the developed countries to show greater flexibility to developing countries in accepting obligations under the world trade organisation agreements in areas of their relative weakness. He said they should be given liberalised, practicable and preferential market access in areas of their export strength.

He expressed the hope that the G-77 and China trade fair and business summit to be held in New Delhi in November this year would give an impetus to trade, investment and technology flows among countries of the south.

The Group of 77 developing countries, representing three-fourths of humanity and a majority of countries in the world, had seen its hey-day several years ago, but lately ''it has been in a moribund state, or is very much in the whirl'', Singh told his colleagues in the Group.

He narrated to the G-77 ministerial meeting a legend about how at the beginning of creation, a great churning of the oceans or samudra manthan took place. From it, he said, emerged poison as well as the nectar of immortality and well-being. Lord Shiva drank the poison whilst the nectar was bequeathed to mankind.

''G-77's task,'' Singh went on, ''is to ensure that the great churning in development thought and policy that is taking place today, throws up the right solutions to give our world the nectar of eternal economic, social and ecological well-being.

''At the same time'', he added, ''we have to make sure that the poison of short-sighted, partisan and hubris-driven solutions is discarded. It is in this historic role-play that the G-77 may yet find itself again and rediscover its capacities.''

UNI