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DEVELOPMENT: South Summit to Focus on Forging a United Front

Thalif Deen

DOHA, Jun 13 2005 (IPS) - Faced with increasing Western inequities in trade and investments, the world’s 132 developing nations will meet in the Qatari capital later this week to adopt a plan of action to strengthen South-South cooperation.

As regional economic alliances continue to proliferate – from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Arab Maghreb Union to the Latin American Economic System and the Economic Community of West African States – the South Summit in Doha will discuss how best to accelerate the growing economic and trade relations among developing nations.

“We must make South-South cooperation the real instrument for our development while recognising that it cannot be a substitute for North-South relations,” Ambassador Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, Permanent Representative of Qatar to the United Nations, told IPS.

He said the government of Qatar – which is hosting the summit and which also sponsored a Forum on Trade and Investment last year – strongly believes in the importance of South-South cooperation at a time of discriminatory trade barriers, rising debts, falling commodity prices and declining development assistance.

“We must strengthen the unity and solidarity of developing countries as a necessary prerequisite for enhancing the ability of the South to negotiate in international multilateral fora,” he added.

Billed as a summit of the Group of 77 (G77), the two-day meeting is scheduled to take place Jun 15-16, and is expected to draw world leaders from the 132 member countries of the G77, the largest coalition of developing nations.

The list of world leaders expected in Doha later this week includes Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleeda Zia, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Haji Badawi, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Qatar’s Minister of Economy and Commerce Sheikh Mohamed bin Ahmad bin Jassim Al-Thani said exports from Argentina and Brazil to China have doubled, and the Chinese market has for the first time become the largest market for neighbouring Asian countries.

In 2003, he said, almost half of all imports by the United States and Japan, and more than a third of all imports by the European Union (EU), came from the South. The same is true of their exports to markets in the South.

The United Nations has set up a Special Unit for South-South Cooperation within the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) as a focal point to help promote cooperation among developing nations.

In a report released last December, the director of the Special Unit Yiping Zhou said the importance of South-South cooperation “cannot be overemphasised in a period of rapid globalisation.”

“The affluence of the (industrial) North is built on strong and inter-active webs of cooperation, and it is imperative that the global South follow suit if the gross imbalance between developed and developing countries is to be remedied,” he said.

The concept of South-South cooperation received its first major boost at a conference on technical cooperation among developing countries in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1978.

Since then, says a new U.N. report on South-South cooperation, developing countries have been “driving world trade and growth” to new heights.

The study singles out five countries – Brazil, China, Cuba, India and Qatar – as continuing to be more active than others as prominent advocates of South-South cooperation.

Brazil has been described as a leader with Africa and Asia, as well as within Latin America. “It has one of the most vital programmes for supporting other developing countries in the areas of public administration, health, education, agriculture, environment, energy and small enterprises,” the study says.

China, a significant market for developing-country exports of commodities, has signed a wide range of trade and development agreements – especially in the energy sector.

India too is emerging as a global market force, especially in the information technology industry, according to the U.N. study.

Both countries now have “strong programmes” that provide training for nationals of other developing countries and support for building institutional capacity, and both are known to commit substantial funding for such projects.

Perhaps the best track record, according to the report, is in Southeast Asia where regional cooperation has been driven by a combination of treaty-based action by governments and market-oriented actions by the private sector.

Beginning 2005, Asian foreign exchange reserves amounted to some 2.4 trillion dollars, of which 1.6 trillion dollars were accounted for by developing countries in the region, including China and India.

In October 2003, the 10-member ASEAN signed “a watershed agreement” to establish an economic community by 2020.

China and India became the first countries outside ASEAN – which consists of Brunei, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Burma – to accede to the group’s founding Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, which renounces the use of force.

The Asian countries have also jointly signed an agreement for a pan-Asian highway, with roads into 32 countries already linked to the project.

“When completed, the system will ease the problems of landlocked central Asia and facilitate travel to capital cities, major harbours, tourist attractions, and industrial and commercial centres,” the report says.

Additionally, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Burma, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand have agreed to create a free trade zone by 2017. And India has agreed to conduct a feasibility study for a deep-sea port in Burma to serve as a transportation hub between south and southeast Asia.

Still, the U.N. study concedes that “there are serious problems facing many developing countries, especially in Africa and those that are least developed, landlocked or small islands.”

However, much of the current planning for increased South-South cooperation in Africa is conducted under the auspices of the 53-member African Union (AU) and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

“African roads, railways and air transport links, where they exist, are often of low quality, while governmental rules and regulations further slow the flow of goods and people within countries and across national borders,” the report notes. And all this, it says, imposes heavy costs on trade.

Of the more than 20 stock markets in Africa, most are under-capitalised and often ill-equipped to handle cross-border transactions.

Only the Johannesburg Stock Exchange – the largest in Africa with some 180 billion dollars in capitalisation- and the regional bourse of eight francophone states in West Africa actively facilitate foreign investment.