DEVELOPMENT: EXPORTS A WAY OUT OF POVERTY?
Ramesh Jaura
BERLIN - Imagine the world's poorest trading their way out of poverty. A grand vision indeed, but how to turn it into reality?
"Don't' give them fish to eat, teach them fishing," says Patricia Francis, executive director of the International Trade Centre (ITC), recalling a simple formula that has been around for some three decades.
But the long shelflife of the idea has not made it redundant. It's just that though well known it has not been put into practice consistently, Francis told IPS.
Teaching the poor fishing is giving them technical assistance that helps them become a part of the global economy, she said.
"Many developing countries depend on such Aid for Trade in order to avail of the opportunities offered by global liberalisation," says Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, Germany's minister for economic cooperation and development -- better known with its acronym BMZ.
Wieczorek-Zeul inaugurated a conference -- officially titled 'Executive Forum on National Export Strategies' -- pledging to continue close cooperation with the ITC by giving four million euros (5.1 million dollars) over the next two years for the Centre's Global Trust Fund Programme.
Germany is a leading bilateral donor of trade-related development assistance, especially in cooperation with the Geneva-based ITC, which is the technical cooperation agency of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for the business aspects of global trade development.
To promote trade development for the benefit of the poor countries, the 25-nation European Union including Germany will increase its spending to 2 billion euros (2.5 billion dollars) on aid for trade by 2010, the German minister said.
'Bringing the Poor into the Export Process: Linkages and Strategic Implications' was in fact the topic of discussions at the four-day conference Sep. 27-30 in Berlin. It was joined by 160 participants from 35 countries, and by 15 United Nations and international organisations.
Ministers and senior officials from developing countries such as Bolivia, Cambodia, Ethiopia, India and Nepal also participated. So did the representatives of major international agencies such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, non-governmental organisations like Oxfam, and industrialised countries such as Germany, Norway and Sweden.
The participation of chambers of commerce, export trade specialists and small and medium-sized enterprises lent a pragmatic dimension to discussions.
Drawing upon her past experience as president of Jamaica Promotions Corporation (JAMPRO), ITC executive director Francis said: "I do not see export trade as a panacea for abolishing poverty overnight, but I do believe that by increasing exports either to the developed world or by encouraging South-South trade we can certainly reduce poverty."
There are several striking examples of that. In Brazil tourism has become a new source of exports for eight poor communities where more than 7,000 people are now working with hotels in the country's largest resort. They are selling food, clothing and artisan products, and recycling organic waste in an environmentally sound way.
Hundreds have found jobs, and more than 10,000 impoverished inhabitants in neighbouring villages are expected to find employment.
Francis also pointed to a successful development in Cambodia in the moribund traditional silk industry which has grown in four years into a four million dollar export business. In five more years Cambodian silk exports may be worth 10 million dollars. Several thousand poor Cambodian silk yarn farmers and weavers will have been lifted out of poverty.
Exports of organic Indian spices has been thriving.
But Francis is realistic enough to admit that such success stories have not created a critical mass capable of making a big dent in nationwide poverty throughout the developing worl (END)
