Current encouraging global economic progress must be carefully managed so that several threats that could derail the current 5-6% annual growth rates in developing countries do not materialise – and so that the benefits are more thoroughly extended to the world's poorest people and the poorest nations, urges a new report by the Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). A WDEV summary with recent figures on the place of developing countries in globalisation.
The report, intended by Secretary General Supachai Panitchpakdi to frame discussion at next spring's UNCTAD XII conference in Accra, Ghana, stresses the importance of sustaining – through careful international and government management – a near-priceless situation in which trade is booming not only between industrialised and developing countries but also between developing countries themselves (so-called South-South trade), and in which demand is strong for farm produce, which is what many of the world's poorest nations have to offer world markets ...
After decades of isolation - imposed by major OECD countries out of concern for the country's human rights violations - Myanmar is emerging as a new darling of the "West" - judging by the accelerating succession of visits by senior officials and gurus. New groups of investors are waiting to enter the country as soon as possible.
Persistent high unemployment, the euro area debt crisis and premature fiscal austerity have already slowed global growth and factor into the possibility of a new recession. Now the United Nations have downgraded significantly its forecasts for the world economy in the next year.
Eastern European states are in for a new round of the crisis. The external control of the banking sector and high reliance on external credit has landed the countries of Eastern Europe in a vulnerable position. Now, credit flows from Western banks are drying up again. Hungary has been the first country in the region to ask for IMF support again.
While the G20 efforts to manage global aggregate demand, exchange rate management and stronger regulation of the international financial sector have not worked out quite as planned, in Cannes the Group was further solidifying its role in directing the system of multilateral institutions.
In November 2011, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) is celebrating its 50th anniversary.The new Minister, Dirk Niebel of the (neo)-liberal FDP has launched a 'radical change of course'. In the recent edition of the Reality of Aid shadow report the change is analyzed.