Global Policy Forum

Consumers International's V Regional Conference inauguratedwww.consumersinternational.orgLIMA, November 26.- Consumers International, the largest international federation of consumer organisations, is planning a meeting in Bretton Woods with other non-governmental organisations to discuss a strategy to revive the original purpose that guided the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank upon ending the Second World War.

The announcement was made by Australian Louise Sylvan, president of Consumers International, during the V Regional Conference of the federation taking place in Lima, Peru, from November 26-28.

Consumers International, founded in 1986 in Latin America, currently has 250 member organisations in 115 countries, 47 of them in Latin America and the Caribbean. It has regional offices in every continent and its Director General and Head Office are located in London.

Sylvan, who participated in the first panel of the conference on Tuesday, November 26 along with the Peruvian Minister of Mining and Energy, Jaime Quijandrí­a, recalled the motives for which the international organisations were created in Bretton Woods, and outlined how they currently operate.

The IMF and the World Bank were not created with the sole purpose of achieving economic growth, said CI president Sylvan. Those who designed these institutions wanted "the benefits of economic growth to be distributed widely, they wanted full employment and saw this as central to a fair society; they wanted not just free trade, but also fair trade. People like John Maynard Keynes and Henry Morgenthau, the Secretary of the Treasury in the Roosevelt administration, understood that trade and investment were means to an end; they were not ends in themselves".

Sylvan said: "While the World Bank under Wolfensohn has begun to understand how far it has strayed from its original purposes, the IMF is unrepentant." The IMF, she added, "imposes destructive national policies – contractionary policies of exactly the kind that exacerbated the Great Depression – which it was actually established to prevent."

The president of CI said that "there is fairly good empirical evidence that openness in trade for goods -and possibly for services– so trade liberalisation – does enhance economic progress, as long as the benefits are distributed. It is much less clear that openness in capital markets is beneficial."

Developed countries that are not subject to the IMF's conditions impose openness on developing countries, stated Sylvan. However, she said, they have "failed to open their own markets to the developing countries in the traded goods areas that were so essential to them." In terms of agriculture and textiles, Sylvan added, "the developed world has been less than open – literally and figuratively."

CI's president, while praising the progress of the consumer movement worldwide, emphasised the importance of CI's work through its regional offices, and the electronic debate on different issues taking place among member organisations. She also announced that the federation she presides is preparing a study which she predicted will be "an excellent piece of work", proposing to other key NGOs in the world to work towards the same goal to develop "a really effective strategy to deal with financial markets".

Quijandrí­a: Supporting consumer organizations

With figures in hand, Jaime Quijandrí­a, Minister of Energy and Mines of Peru, offered a sombre scenario on the region's economic situation. "We are observing a growing deterioration of the quality of life in Latin America, a stiffening of conditions in the global market", and the return of neopopulist positions.

The Peruvian minister stated that "estimates for 2002 point to an increase in poverty in about seven million people, six million of which are indigent".

Quijandrí­a admitted that in spite of the important weight of external factors, the most important causes of current difficulties in the region "lay in domestic weaknesses". Nevertheless, he added, these deficiencies have been exacerbated by "adverse external shocks" and by an international economic and financial system "that does not work perfectly either".

In spite of this, Quijandrí­a expressed support of globalisation, stating that "every successful example of economic development over the past century has taken place through globalisation and trade". In this context, he stressed the need for consumers to have access to information. "Access to simple or complex data is vital for making the right choices", he said. The broader access to information is, he added, "more possibilities there are of clearing up doubts and transmitting confidence", adding that recognition of consumer organisations is "key to the protection of consumer rights, especially when there are collective interests of certain groups of consumers of products and services that deserve to be respected, defended and guaranteed".

Prior to the presentations of Sylvan and Quijandrí­a, the conference was inaugurated in the Porras Barreneches Hemicycle in the Congress building by Carlos Ferrero, president of the Peruvian Congress, Johnny Lescano, president of the congressional Consumer Defence Commission, César Almeida, president of Indecopi, the government agency in charge of consumer protection, and José Vargas Niello, Director of CI's Office for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Just as in the previous conference in Panama in 1999, this week's event was preceded by national conferences co-ordinated by CI's 47 member organisations in the region, both independent and governmental.

However, contrasting with the other events, this time the Conference –which is held every three years- will focus more on analysing the regional consumer movement than on studying and updating the main issues that are permanently on CI's agenda (food safety, economy and trade, sustainable consumption, pubic utilities, legal protection and consumer education, among others).

Conference participants will meet in the Events Centre of PetroPerú, in Lima, the Peruvian capital.

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