Business urges UN Millennium Assembly to boost trade, competition and foreign investment

French version

United Nations, New York, 26 January 2000 - World business today called on the coming Millennium Assembly to ensure that the United Nations takes the lead in backing a rules-based open system of international trade and investment while opposing all forms of protectionism.

A business message to the Millennium Assembly also said that the UN and its relevant agencies and programmes, and not the multilateral trading system, should be the recognized global institutions for raising environmental and labour standards and promoting human rights.

These were the core values cited by Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the Global Compact that he proposed to business leaders one year ago and that ICC has taken up in the name of its 7,000 member companies and business associations.

The President of the International Chamber of Commerce, Adnan Kassar, handed over to the Secretary-General a world business message for the Millennium Assembly on the role of the UN in the 21st century. It was delivered on behalf of ICC's worldwide membership in more than 130 countries and territories.

The message said that history has shown that improvements in human rights and in labour and environmental standards are more readily attainable in conditions of rising prosperity, produced by the interaction of the market economy and good governance. "Strong commitment to open markets and the effective treatment of these issues are mutually reinforcing and should go hand in hand." To achieve the results sought by business, the effective ness and authority of the UN should be strengthened through the enlargement of its resources base, ICC said. However, business urged further streamlining under institutional reforms being undertaken in the UN system "to tackle bureaucracy and the duplication of tasks."

The ICC statement said increased reliance on free enterprise, open markets and competition implied less detailed governmental regulation. "At the same time, an orderly, stable society able to prosper economically from private entrepreneurship requires a framework of essential rules administered by strong, efficient, transparent and impartial government, the essence of good governance."

The decision to submit a business statement in advance of the Millennium Assembly next September was taken at a meeting in Geneva in July between an ICC delegation led by ICC President Kassar, Secretary-General Annan, and the heads of UN agencies. Top executives from 27 leading international companies from both developed and developing countries also took part.

ICC said it was ready to work closely with the UN in the task of demonstrating the crucial links between the free flow across borders of goods and services, knowhow, technology and information.

"However, freedom can only work with rules, and the same holds true for markets," the message said. "A balance between freedom and rules needs to be achieved for the good functioning of the world economy."

ICC said the capacity of developing countries to integrate themselves into the global economy and share the benefits of globalization should be enhanced. This applied especially to the least developed countries and economies in transition.

A potentially disruptive aspect of growing global interdependence was the gap between countries that have successfully integrated into a liberalized, competitive global economy and those that have only partially been able to do so or have largely failed, the statement said. It added: "To reduce this gap will be one of the major challenges of the new century."

The business message said that the UN should give special attention to capacity-building in least developed countries, particularly in human resources, physical infrastructure and institutional reform. This would assist these countries to raise and attract investment and to link themselves to the global information society.

"With the rapidly growing international flows of private capital, the UN and multilateral development agencies should increasingly focus their technical and financial assistance, and especially their concessionary aid, on helping the least developed countries, which have particular difficulties in attracting foreign direct investment."

The message commented: "Currently, too much duplication and inadequate coordination are preventing intergovernmental bodies from handling effectively these complex problems. Truly global problems cannot be resolved by isolated national or regional efforts."

Full text of statement