Ambassador Mukhtar Tileuberdi (Kazakhstan), President of UNCTAD’s Trade and Development Board, has told a high-level meeting in New York that UNCTAD’s theme of development-centred globalization is central to ensuring progress in the coming years.
Ambassador Tileuberdi spoke on 22 April 2013 at the annual high-level meeting that the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) holds with international financial institutions and trade bodies.
The overall theme of the meeting was Coherence, coordination and cooperation in the context of financing for sustainable development and the post-2015 development agenda.
The UNCTAD XIII quadrennial conference, held last year, had addressed the need for development-centred globalization, in order to secure more inclusive and sustained growth and development, Mr. Tileuberdi told the meeting. He stressed the importance of trade for accelerating development, and said that trade flows should help to eliminate disparities among nations. He called on States to successfully conclude the Doha Round of trade negotiations.
"But trade should not be viewed as an end in itself," said the President of the Trade and Development Board. "It should be seen as a vital contributing factor to development."
Mr. Tileuberdi told the meeting that it was important to learn lessons from the global economic and financial crisis. One of the chief lessons was the need for coherence and consistency in the international economic architecture. The international financial system was the weak link, he said, as it had evolved under its own steam and lacked the "public goods" component lying at the core of the multilateral process. Mr. Tileuberdi called for joint global action to reform global economic governance - building on previous experience and placing greater emphasis on crisis prevention, risk insurance, and timely resolution of debt crises.
"In order for development to advance comprehensively around the world, the expansion of productive capacities is critical and this requires technological innovation," Mr. Tileuberdi said. "That, in turn, requires stronger efforts to mobilize investment for productive innovation across large parts of the developing world."
"UNCTAD's work on development policy stresses the need to establish a collaborative environment that encourages a wide range of stakeholders to work together to solve technological problems as they relate to specific local contexts," he said. "And yet, science, technology and investment policies are often disconnected from other national policies that are critical to development, partly because such policies are seen as being primarily about scientific research, rather than the development of productive capacities." Mr. Tileuberdi called for greater attention to be given to that issue.
