TT to chair Geneva talks

TRINIDAD AND Tobago will chair the 17th meeting of the Technical Group of the Intergovernmental Group of 24 (G-24) in Geneva, Switzerland later this year.  This is the second meeting for 2003 and it will be held ahead of the Annual Meeting of the IMF and World Bank.  The venue is the Headquarters of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva because of the historic and on-going collaboration between the UNCTAD and the G-24 particularly with respect to the Research programmes of the G-24.  Preparations for the meeting are in their initial stages.

Trinidad and Tobago was highly congratulated at the 69th meeting of the G-24 Ministers, held April 11 in Washington DC, for its hosting of the 16th Technical Group Meeting in February 2003.  The meeting was considered to be a success in terms of its relevance and quality of the presentations, for the interest they evoked and the animated discussions that followed. That technical meeting was held at the Central Bank, Port-of-Spain. The G-24 was established in 1971. Its main objective is to concert the position of the developing countries on monetary and development finance issues. 
In this regard, for the past three decades the G-24 has been actively pursuing a proactive agenda, which seeks to ensure that developing countries have a voice and influence in the decision-making processes of the international financial institutions, in particular, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

The 69th Meeting of G-24 Ministers was held in Washington DC to coincide with the Spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank.  At that meeting the G-24 Ministers observed that global economic recovery had become much weaker than they had anticipated at their September 2002 meeting and that the outlook remained highly uncertain.  The Ministers urged the international community to be vigilant and stand ready to provide special financing to countries that face significant burdens on their balance of payments and to mitigate risks associated with commodity shocks, declines in tourism receipts and private transfers.  They noted that small states were often severely affected by such negative developments.

The Ministers urged the international financial institutions to implement, in conjunction with official financial institutions in industrial countries, measures aimed at promoting larger and more stable capital flows to developing economies and restoring confidence in international capital markets. They called for progress toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals, the advancement of the multilateral trade negotiations under the Doha Round, placing special attention on the elimination of trade-distorting agricultural subsidies and domestic support schemes in advanced countries.  They also noted with concern the continuing downward trend in official development assistance flows.

The Ministers were concerned that the Heavily Indebted Poor Country Initiative (HIPC) was falling short of the objectives for which it was established and called for consideration to be given to addressing the debt sustainability of non-HIPC low-income countries and middle-income heavily indebted countries. The G-24 Ministers emphasised that IMF surveillance should focus on core macroeconomic issues and be applied in a more even-handed manner in order to enhance the legitimacy of the IMF and the World Bank; and that there should be significant strengthening of the voice, participation and voting power of developing countries in the decision-making processes of the two institutions. Trinidad and Tobago holds the position of First Vice Chairman of the G-24 Ministers until September when this country will assume Chairmanship of the Group.