PHA-Exchange> How to Help Poor Countries

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from "Ruggiero, Mrs. Ana Lucia (WDC)" <ruglucia at PAHO.ORG> -----
    
How to Help Poor Countries

Nancy Birdsall is President of the Center for Global Development in
Washington, D.C. Dani Rodrik is Professor of International Political
Economy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Arvind
Subramanian is Division Chief in the Research Department of the
International Monetary Fund
Foreign Affairs, July/August 2005

 

Read preview at:
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050701faessay84410/nancy-birdsall-dani-r
odrik-arvind-subramanian/how-to-help-poor-countries.html
<http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050701faessay84410/nancy-birdsall-dani-
rodrik-arvind-subramanian/how-to-help-poor-countries.html>  

 

"..... Increasing aid and market access for poor countries makes sense
but will not do that much good. Wealthy nations should also push other
measures that could be far more rewarding, such as giving the poor more
control over economic policy, financing new development-friendly
technologies, and opening labor markets.

 

..... The year 2005 has become the year of development. In September, at
the UN Millennium Summit meeting of heads of state, in New York, leaders
of wealthy nations will emphasize their commitment to deeper debt relief
and increased aid programs for developing countries. The Millennium
Development Goals, the centerpiece of the conference's program, call for
halving the levels of world poverty and hunger by 2015.

 

....The summit will focus on increasing international aid to 0.7 percent
of donors' gross national product to finance a doubling of aid transfers
to especially needy areas, particularly in Africa. With respect to
global trade, efforts will center on the Doha Round of multilateral
trade negotiations and opening markets to important exports (such as
cotton) from developing countries. The discussions will thus proceed
based on two implicit but critical underlying assumptions: that wealthy
nations can materially shape development in the poor world and that
their efforts to do so should consist largely of providing resources to
and trading opportunities for poor countries.

 

These assumptions ignore key lessons of the last four decades -- and of
economic history more generally. Development is something largely
determined by poor countries themselves, and outsiders can play only a
limited role....."

 

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