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PREFERENCES FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
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Introduction:
(i) UNCTAD Special Committee on Preferences
The purpose of this paper is to set out as briefly as is consistent with the complexity of the subject the state of play on the question of preferences for developing countri、. The resolution unanimously adopted at the Second UNCTAD Conference earlier this year called for the establishment of a new Special Committee on Preferences to meet for the file time in November 1968 and again in the first half of 1969. The declared objective is to settle the details of the arrangements for a preference scheme in the course of 1969. The new Special Committee is scheduled to meet during the period 29th November - 17th December. Its membership is unrestricted. Its discussions will be in effect a continuation of the ones which took place in Committee II of the Second UNCTAD Conference.
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(ii) Work in the 0.E.C.D.
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The O.E.C.D. have not been idle since UNCTAD II. Ad Hoc Group on preferences under British chairmanship was set up.
As there was no disposition to allow further work to be carried out in a restricted group on the lines of the four member Special Group on preferences which laboured through 1966 and 1967, all members of the Organisation plus Australia and New Zealand are represented on the Ad Hoc Group. Meetings were held in July and September (reported in telegrams Nos. 35 and 44 Saving from UK.Del. to 0.E.C.D.); and an interim report submitted to the 0.E.C.D. Trade Committee. The Trade Committee considered this report at its meetings on 10th and 11th October, (telegram No. 45 saving from UK.Del. 0.E.C.D.).
3. The only positive agreement so far reached is that the prospective preference giving countries should, on 1st March, 1969, table lists of products falling within chapters 25-99 of the Brussels Nomenclature on which they are not prepared to grant preferences and positive lists of products falling within the first 24 chapters of the Nomenclature on which they are so prepared. Even though the preference giving countries are enjoined "to state clearly all the assumptions, qualifications and conditions on which the grant of preferences could be considered and on the basis of which the lists have been prepared", there is still considerable doubt whether what is tabled on 1st March will be sufficiently clear and detailed to make it possible to draw up precise comparisons by tariff sub-headings of what each of the countries in question is prepared to do.
Where Countries Stand:
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The United States announced their conversion to the principle of granting preferences to developing countries in April 1967. They pleaded internal difficulties within the Administration and uncertainties arising out of the Presidential election as reasons for inability to accept any earlier target date than 1st March, for the submission of lists. They have consistently refused to commit themselves to any specific working hypothesis on the basis of which preferences might be granted. We still do not know, for
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