May 15, 1985
END PROTECTIONISM, SOUTH ASIAN MINISTERS URGE.
NEW DELHI, MAY 13 (IPS) – South Asian Foreign Ministers Monday at their meeting in Thimpu, Bhutan, called for "rapid and progressive" elimination of protectionist barriers, Indian news agencies reported.-The "urgent need" for such changes came as Foreign Ministers of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal and Pakistan and the special representative of the Sri Lankan President began a two-day meeting with a review of the Third World economic situation.- Protectionist measures must be rolled back, they declared, before the developing countries can consider participating in a new international round of trade negotiations. The United States is lobbying hard for a new round even though it was agreed at the April meetings of the International monetary Fund/World Bank Development committee that a new round should start only after the problems with the latest round are resolved.- The problems relate mainly to the protectionist barriers raised by the United States and other industrial countries against exports from most developing countries.- Seven such rounds of Multilateral Trade negotiations have been held under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade the latest in the mid-1970’s in Tokyo.- Washington plans to push ahead in GATT for a new round in 1986 and has said it will seek bilateral trade talks if no agreement on a new round can be reached in GATT.- The South Asian Foreign Ministers also called for an early convening of an international conference on money and finance for development with universal participation, as proposed by the seventh non-aligned summit.- And they called for a renewed and determined effort to open a comprehensive north-south dialogue under UN auspices to restructure international economic relations.- The flow of concessional resources to the developing countries needs to be stepped up, the Ministers said, through supplementary financing for the seventh replenishment of the International Development Association (IDA, the World Bank’s soft-loan window).- An increase in the capital of the World Bank itself, and a substantial increase in IMF quotas and in the allocation of new Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), the IMF monetary unit are also needed, the group said in its review.- The Foreign Ministers agreed that South Asian countries should consult each other closely on economic issues in the relevant international, inter-governmental and regional forums.-