Favouring a small levy on international capital flows to create funds for global development, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Sunday called for rapid elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers to exports from developing countries.
Addressing an informal summit of G-8 leaders, Vajpayee said the international community needs some benchmarks for monitoring and evaluating the outcomes of the Doha Round of WTO negotiations in terms of concrete progress towards a global trading regime which would promote development.
He listed rapid elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers to developing countries' exports, broader access to developing countries to pharmaceuticals, phasing out of trade-distorting agricultural subsidies and removal of barriers to agricultural exports as some of the areas where these benchmarks were required.
Vajpayee has been specially invited to the meeting by G-8 chairman and French President Jacques Chirac.
Vajpayee said the developing countries were 'deeply disappointed' by the progress so far on the Millennium Development Round since Doha meeting nearly two years ago.
Thanking Chirac for launching this 'excellent' initiative for a forum of discussions between the developed and the developing countries, he said this meeting was a major first step in the direction of his demand for quite sometime
now for a 'global dialogue on development.'
Appreciating the focus of these meetings on measures to help African countries, the prime minister said these facilities should be extended to other similarly placed developing countries too.
"Poverty, disease, malnutrition and hunger do not distinguish between continent, country, colour or creed. Their counteraction also should not make such distinctions," he said.
Vajpayee felt the huge resources required for poverty alleviation and economic growth in developing countries cannot be raised purely through the savings of developing countries. "External augmentation is required," he said.
"We have to look at measures to generate additional financial resources for development. We also have to address the problem of unrestrained resources flows, which -- as the East Asia crisis showed -- shatter the economy of developing countries," Vajpayee said.
The prime minister said he believed time has come for the world to seriously consider the idea of a small levy on international capital flows to be credited to funds for global development.
"This would both dampen volatile capital movements and generate appreciable resources for development. I know that
various technical problems have been advanced to dismiss this idea as impractical. But its potential is so great that special efforts should be made to create a practical regime for its implementation," he said.
