INTRODUCTION

INFORMATION AND MARKET TRANSPARENCY

      São Paulo consensus was adopted at its eleventh quadrennial conference in June 2004 - UNCTAD XI - held in Brazil. It complements effectively the Bangkok Plan of Action to form a solid basis to build upon on the road to its twelfth session in 2008. In this frame, the São Paolo Consensus par. 74 recognized, inter alia, that "relevant suggestions contained in the report of the Meeting of Eminent Persons on Commodity Issues and the relevant outcome of discussions at the fiftieth session of the Trade and Development Board and in the General Assembly on the report should be given serious consideration. Support for commodity development projects - especially market-based projects - and for their preparation under the Second Account of the Common Fund for Commodities should be encouraged." Paragraph 11 of the above-mentioned high level meeting of "Eminent Persons on Commodity Issues" stressed in particular that "developing countries suffer from a lack of access to timely, comprehensive, accurate and user-friendly information and analysis, as well as from the capacity to utilize it in decision making at the government, firm and farm level. It then call for strengthening the capacity of UNCTAD to regularly disseminate specialized information and analysis, covering a broad range of commodity issues and establish networks so as to contribute to market transparency and to develop collaborative tools to facilitate the use of this information".

      These decisions adopted at UNCTAD XI complement the mandate given to UNCTAD at its tenth session which recognized inter alia that " market transparency and information should be improved, as should capacities of developing country enterprises to access and use information, particularly in electronic form, and training to this end should be supported" (par. 68)" as well as that UNCTAD work's should focus on (...) "assisting in increasing market transparency and information flows through, inter alia, collection and publication of relevant commodity information and data on a regular and frequent basis (par. 144)."

      In this spirit, UNCTAD developed a new way of working, in which specific skills (in this instance, expertise in world commodity markets) are obtained by pooling our efforts with other international organizations, academics, commodity exchanges, commodity associations, regional financial organizations, banks, trading companies as well as with warehousing and inspection companies.

      The creation of new synergies benefits various actors interested in the commodities area in both developing and industrialized countries, from policy makers to small producers (via relays), from trading companies to the processing industry, from researchers to the banking sector. In particular, the INFOCOMM project - market information in the commodities area - seeks to promote market transparency, to improve the understanding of commodity structures and to access to the analysis vital to the formulation of pertinent policies for commodity production, marketing, processing and financing. The main goals of INFOCOMM project, funded by the Government of France, involve the following: