India calls on UN to play lead role in reform of economic and trade institutions

A comprehensive overhaul of the world’s key financial institutions and drastic changes to the rules of international trade are necessary if poor countries are to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by their target date of 2015, India’s External Affairs Minister told the General Assembly today.

“The United Nations must play an important role in overseeing the reform of the international financial architecture,” Pranab Mukherjee told the annual high-level debate of the Assembly, held at UN Headquarters in New York.

“This should include measures to ensure a greater voice for and participation by developing countries in the Bretton Woods institutions,” he said, referring to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Mr. Mukherjee said these reforms must be taken to their “logical conclusion if the credibility of these institutions is to be enhanced,” noting that progress towards the MDGs – a series of eight anti-poverty targets which world leaders agreed at a UN summit in 2000 to work towards over the next 15 years – has been tardy.

“Early and substantive progress” in the current Doha round of international trade negotiations is also essential, he said, urging special attention be paid to the needs and interests of subsistence farmers in poor States.

“The overarching principle of special and differential treatment for developing countries remains a categorical imperative.”

The External Affairs Minister voiced alarm at the “regrettable inversion of global resource flows” in recent years, with a net outflow of resources from developing countries.

Overall, official development assistance (ODA) from the industrialized world fell markedly last year, he said, and remains well below the target measure of 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).

The ODA that is being sent is “primarily being used to finance debt relief. That this is happening after so many years of liberalization and globalization highlights our collective failure. Perhaps we should be considering mechanisms such as an international debt commission to redress the problem of developing country debt.”

Mr. Mukherjee also pressed the case for reform of the Security Council, saying it was now time for intergovernmental negotiations on the issue to begin on the latest proposals for altering the 15-member body’s membership and working methods.