Chairman Benjamin W. Mkapa’s Opening Speech

On behalf of the South Centre, I welcome you to our conference, being held in conjunction with the meetings of the Council and Board of the Centre.

The themes of the conference are the global economy, which will be discussed this morning, and the state of multilateral   negotiations, in the afternoon.

We have chosen these topics because the Centre believes that the global economic conditions and how they affect developing countries is now a crucial issue that will be of immense importance to our policy makers and political leaders.  On the other hand, the South Centre’s bread and butter activity is to help developing countries with multilateral   negotiations, and a review of some of these negotiations is very topical.

We have assembled some eminent experts of the South to address these issues, and we are very happy that you have assembled here to discuss what they have to say.

The global economy has not really recovered from the 2008 financial crisis.  Indeed, the South Centre predicted that when the Western economies begin their recovery, the developing countries would be in even bigger trouble.   Reality is now showing that our prediction has been correct.

The developed countries have made policy choices during their crisis that in our view were not appropriate either for their own economies or for the global economy.  Their policies are hurting the developing countries.   For example, due to their easy money policies, a lot of speculative capital went into the developing countries.  This boom created problems including inflation, asset bubbles, and exchange rate appreciation that reduced our export competitiveness.

Now that the US easy money policy is tapering or being reduced, the reverse problems are evident.   Capital is flowing out of developing countries back to the US and Europe, and currencies are depreciating,   making it harder to service external debt.  The balance of payments deficits of some countries are widening.   The prospects for commodity prices are not bright.  The GNP growth rate has reduced.

We are waiting eagerly to listen to our own South Centre chief economist, and to the many other experts in the first panel. Can developing countries do anything to get the developed countries to correct their policies?  Can developing countries do something to defend themselves if the misguided policies of the West continue? How will developing countries be affected and what can they do?

The second panel discussion is equally interesting.   The crucial negotiations now taking place are about trade, about intellectual property, and about the post-2015 development agenda and the SDGs. We have eminent experts to address the WTO’s Bali outcome and the post-Bali agenda.  We also have experts who will discuss the commodities issue, and the issue of climate change from indigenous peoples’ perspective.

As for myself, I believe that the Economic Partnership  Agreement which the EU is trying  to get African  countries  to agree to, is the most critical trade  and negotiations  issue facing Africa.   If the EU’s model is accepted, it would cause immense damage to our agriculture, industry and development   prospects.  It will also make it very difficult if not impossible to achieve effective economic integration within the African continent, which has been a dream of our political leaders since independence.

I understand that in Geneva, the WTO negotiations have revived, and with this revival come many opportunities   and dangers.  The most  important   principle  is that the development  dimension  and objective  of the Doha Development  Agenda must be respected and adhered  to  not only in rhetoric  but in the outcomes.   Otherwise it is better to continue fighting for it, than to give in to the developed countries, just because we want to conclude the negotiations.

On the SDGs and post-2015 development agenda, the South Centre has done a lot of work in this area, and I look forward to listening to the discussion on this, as well as on commodities.

I wish all of you good discussions at this conference, which I now declare opened.  Thank you.