Word: ldcs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...little chance that these small steps will lead to any sustained effort by the rich nations to help the poor. Says U.S. Treasury Secretary W. Michael Blumenthal: "In view of our domestic problems, no substantial increase in assistance seems feasible at present." Many Western statesmen contend that the LDCs lack the infrastructure (roads, ports, dams, railways), political organization and expertise to use much more aid than they are now getting. Says West German Economics Minister Count Otto Lambsdorff: "I do not believe that a kind of Marshall Plan for the Third World-which today would have to be shouldered jointly...
...version of the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II may well be the most workable solution. Only such a plan could overcome the widespread feeling among voters that much aid to LDCs is wasted because it consists of piecemeal efforts by the givers to finance uncoordinated projects. It is often forgotten that the Marshall Plan involved far more than the mere ladling out of money: it committed the U.S. to aid countries that drew up detailed and effective plans to use the cash and goods for rebuilding. This coordinated planning is vital-especially since the task...
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...