GENEVA — The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has proposed a plan to help the world’s poorest nations break out of the cycle of poverty.
The move also would help accelerate investment opportunities in textiles and apparel manufacturing in poor countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, with preferential access to lucrative, rich markets such as the United States, the European Union, Japan and Canada.
The proposed plan also calls for bound duty-free treatment to be granted by developed countries to all commodities and manufactured products from all of the world’s least-developed countries. This alone, estimates the UNCTD, “is likely to bring welfare gains of as much as $8 billion and could increase LDC exports by an additional $6.4 billion, or 10 percent a year.”
Lakshmi Puri, director for international trade at the UNCTD and author of the plan, said in a news conference Tuesday that preferential quota-free and duty-free access schemes such as the U.S.’s African Growth & Opportunity Act and the EU’s Everything But Arms should be guaranteed for a minimum of 10 years.
Under such an accord, AGOA, which provided preferential trade to poor African countries, also would be extended to Asian nations such as Bangladesh, Laos and Cambodia.
The U.N. blueprint also envisions technical assistance to boost export capacity and infrastructure.