THIRD UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE ON THE LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES

BRUSSELS, MAY 14-20, 2001

STATEMENT BY:

H.E. Mr. Abdulla Yameen
Minister of Trade and industries of Maldives

Mr. Chairman, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

I would like to join the previous speakers in congratulating you, Mr. Chairman, on your election to preside over the proceedings of this important conference. 

Allow me also to express my delegation's appreciation of the arrangements made for the conference by the European Union and the Government of Belgium, and of the assistance rendered by the donor community and UNCTAD in preparing for this event.  

Mr. Chairman:  

The expectations of a peace dividend have not materialized a decade after LDC II.  On the contrary, aid flow continues to thin, poverty continues to grow, and LDCs are worse off.   

Today, globalization is supposed to enable all countries to benefit from it.  Yet, the gulf between the developed and the least developed economies has become wider.  Rather than being integrated into the world market, the LDCs face heightened risks of marginalization. 

The Maldives has been in some ways more fortunate than a number of countries over the past ten years. Yet, at the present time, we face the future with a sense of foreboding. For, despite sustaining a rate of growth, which is currently about 6 percent, the structural obstacles to development have not been overcome. In fact, very often, external developments impose crisis management responses, such as in the case of the fisheries industry, which had undergone a series of shocks during the 1990s. Despite the inhibiting pressures of structural constraints to economic development, we are being told repeatedly that we no longer qualify for preferential treatment on the basis of generalized statistical indicators, which manifestly fail to provide a clear picture of the developmental realities of extremely small economies such as that of the Maldives. 

With a population widely dispersed on nearly two hundred islands, the Maldives is in a uniquely difficult position.  The potential for diversification is extremely limited, due to lack of natural resources, the small internal market and high production costs resulting from unavailability of scale economies and remoteness.  

The Maldives also faces numerous threats posed by a deteriorating global environment.  We are encouraged by the initiatives of many countries to protect and preserve the global environment. 

Mr. Chairman:  

The mandate for LDC III includes the formulation and adoption of measures to achieve the progressive integration of LDCs into the world economy. While a number of such measures are included in the draft Action Programme before us, a glaring omission is the absence of measures designed to assist countries to graduate from LDC status.  LDC II gave considerable attention to devising rules of graduation so that countries that no longer required the supportive framework given to LDCs could be identified. It is perhaps no accident that only one country has so far been graduated.  

Throughout the 1990s, we saw that a number of other countries had technically qualified for graduation. Yet, in every case, a closer look at the circumstances warranted their continued inclusion in the LDC list. It is not surprising that all of these states are island states. It is high time that the anomalies were taken seriously so that the criteria used in identifying LDCs are refined to provide a more accurate picture of the real situation. Otherwise, the propensity for a miscarriage of justice is likely to be very high and could inflict a very severe penalty on a country that does not have the economic resilience to suffer the kinds of external shocks that graduation would impose. 

Mr. Chairman: 

We are also fully aware that integration into the world trading system in general, and access to investment flows in particular, are a necessary condition for sustainable growth. We believe that the LDCs and the development partners will need to contribute significantly to the deliberations of this Conference, as well as to the follow up programmes of action.  

My delegation believes that UNCTAD can play a pivotal and catalytic role in monitoring and analysing, and in assisting in the development of LDCs. It can do so by working closely with national governments, and collaborating in a focussed manner with development partners.  

The Maldives thanks for the support and co-operation of all its development partners and looks forward to continue to working closely with them in achieving the objectives of people-centred, sustainable development.  

Thank you!