the 11th quadrennial session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (unctad) agreed on three guidelines to ensure a sustainable path to development for all: increasing South-South cooperation; ensuring adequate policy space for countries to formulate development strategies; and improving coordination and understanding between national as well as international economic policy-making bodies. It is believed that these tenets might remove unbalanced distribution of globalisation's benefits among, even within, countries.
During the meeting, held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, from June 13-18, unctad members committed themselves to a more comprehensive system of preferential trade between developing countries. Reflected in the ministerial declaration -- The Spirit of Sao Paulo -- adopted at the meet, this commitment also recognises that a significant source of global growth is generated in the South. "We are witnessing trends in South-South trade that must be accelerated in a new geography of trade and economics," said Rubens Ricupero, secretary-general, unctad. He was speaking at the ministerial meeting of the Global System of Trade Preferences among Developing Countries (gstp), also held in Sao Paulo. The gstp is a scheme, with 44 signatories, through which developing nations provide mutual trade preferences.
The unctad meet also acknowledged that the demands of increased interdependence and international economic governance decrease the space for countries to manoeuvre domestic economic polices. Trade, investment and industrial development are most affected by such "policy space" loss. Thus the negotiated outcome -- the Sao Paulo Consensus -- emphasised the importance of enabling governments to balance national policies and international commitments in development goals.
Besides, the members agreed that developing countries needed the support of an enabling international environment. They urged unctad to work towards ensuring that coherence of each other's approaches exists among monetary, financial and trading systems at the international level and also among them and those at the national levels.
Ministers further committed themselves to accelerating trade negotiations under the World Trade Organization's (wto) work programme, launched at the wto Doha Ministerial Conference in 2001. "A major contribution of the Doha Ministerial Declaration was to place the needs and interests of developing countries at the heart of the Doha work programme," said Kamal Nath, India's Union commerce and industry minister and leader of the Indian delegation to the meet. unctad also recognised the complementarities between wto's work and its own resolve of ensuring development through trade. It hoped that this would help in addressing development concerns.