Word: ldcs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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While many industrialized nations have wobbly economies, the less developed countries (LDCs) are enjoying a period of good health that is likely to continue into the mid-1980s. That is the substance of an unexpectedly optimistic report last week by the World Bank. The economies of the non-oil producing developing countries expanded 4.9% last year, vs. 3.5% for developed nations. One reason is that bountiful harvests have substantially eased food shortages, especially in Southeast Asia. The effective use made of World Bank agricultural loans, which have increased 40% since 1973, was especially praised. The LDCs also benefited from...
...countries to begin oil exploration projects. That, too, should provide a continuing stimulus for growth. A major threat to further gains is the possibility that the developed countries will put up trade barriers against Third World exports. That would be self-defeating, warns the report, because only if the LDCs remain on the upswing can they continue to buy 28% of the manufactured goods exported by the industrial states...
Formal aid would not be the only component of such a plan. One other step that the rich countries should take together is to lower the tariffs and scrap the quotas that keep many products of the LDCS-beef, sugar, cotton textiles, shoes -out of Northern markets. These rising barriers hurt precisely those LDCs, such as Argentina, Brazil, India and Mexico, that have the best chance of building sound economies based on a mix of industry and agriculture. The World Bank estimates that trade barriers cost LDCs $24 billion a year in lost exports of manufactured goods alone...
...givers would have to insist on tough conditions: not only effective economic-development plans, but also population-control programs and the reform of universities that produce too many lawyers and literary scholars, too few agronomists and engineers. If some LDCs equate these conditions with colonialism, they can refuse the aid. The givers must be prepared to aid some peoples ruled by one-party dictatorships - there are almost no impoverished democracies - while spurning the Idi Amins who blatantly trample human rights...
...Marshall Plan for the developing nations would admittedly be imperfect. But consider the alternatives: for the LDCs, continued poverty; for the industrial nations, endless political threats and damage to their own economies. Rich and poor countries do not have to like each other to realize they have a common interest they cannot escape...