Recent World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports indicate that developing countries together owe a total of over $600 billion. An Economic body like the Lome Convention which aims at supporting some of these afflicted countries has its own problems vis-a-vis the European Community.Negotiations are due to begin this month on a successor to the Lome Convention under which 63 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) developing countries have a special relationship with the European community.
A Correspondent examines the achievements and failure of the convention and puts forward some of the problems that may come up in the forthcoming meeting.
The Convention, concerned mainly with trade, came into force in 1975. A new agreement, Lome II, was signed in 1979 and will expire in February 1985.
Since over half the 63 ACP countries are Commonwealth including almost all West African Countries the Common- wealth has a crucial interest in the out- come of the negotiations. The signs are that talking would be long and difficult, and may not even get seriously under way for some months.
One indicator of the prevailing climate was the European Commun- ity's rejection in May this year of the ACP countries' request for additional compensatory financing facility. Designed to help stabilise ACP export earnings, and covering over 40 export commodities, the scheme proved in- adequate to cope with the sharp fall in commodity prices in 1981/82, when less than half the claims of the ACP countries under the scheme were met. The latest through line by the EC could overshadow the start of negotiations on Lome III.
Commonwealth Secretary-General, Shridath Ramphal, who played a central role in negotiating Lome I as Guyana's Foreign Minister, sees Lome III as an opportunity to rekindle the spirit of the original convention. In the first of a series of Lome briefing papers, sponsored by the liaison committee of Development, non-governmental organisations to the EC, he described the forthcoming negotiations as the first major cooperation with the Third World.
In contrast with Lome I which marked a major advance from the concept of association to genuinely negotiated partnership, the negotiations for Lome II were marked by EC retrenchment and ACP dissatisfaction. In the trade field, for example, the ACP consider the EC has not fully honoured either the spirit nor the letter of the sugar protocol, while he community's threat to use GATT safeguards pro- visions against the minuscule ACP exports of manufactures such as cloth- ing, and the manner of its applications of the rules of origin provisions, offend not only against the conventions development objectives but also against its partnership concept.
Nevertheless, the Lome convention does have the advantage of an established institutional and contractual framework for North-South CO- operation. This frame-work offers dynamic possibilities for greater and more beneficial economic co-operation in many vital areas. It is essential that the forth-coming negotiations should fulfil their potential.
This will mean improving the convention in several aspects. Foremost, perhaps, is the need to increase all kinds of financial flows from the community to the ACP, not just aid but commercial flows as well.
It will also mean specific improvement in trade policy, particularly for those products covered by the common agricultural policy in the application on the Stabex scheme, the rule of origin criteria and the "safe guards" provisions.
Achieving a partnership between North and South will mean improving the convention in order directions, too. A programme to increase food product- ion is essentially important, not only in Sub Saharan Africa but in the Caribbean and the Pacific as well. In these and other aspects, including community aid targeting and an increased emphasis in mineral development and on the agricultural and fisheries sectors, Mr. Ramphal generally welcomes the EC Commissions recent memorandum on development policy. The next step is to ensure that its proposals help bring about a new convention which is a worthy successor to Lome I.
Prices of these agricultural produce must be protected.
