Confidential
947
Meeting of Commonwealth Finance Ministers
on 25-26 September
The Commonwealth Secretariat have called a meeting on 20 June
on this subject, to be attended by representatives of Commonwealth
High Commissions and H.M.G. The following paragraphs set out the
matters to be discussed at the meeting and the proposed Commonwealth
Office line on them.
Item 1. Draft agenda for the Finance Ministers' meeting: the
agenda customarily takes in(a) the world economic situation (b) the
international monetary situation (c) development questions, ending of
course with the communique. Since this meeting is held immediately
before the annual meeting of the I.M.F. and I.B.R.D. at Washington
subject (b) is obviously desirable. As regards the other subjects
there is some merit in maintaining the customary broad subject headings
but we should be ready to head off discussion of the specific economic
problem of Rhodesia and to limit possible discussions on the recent
Hong Kong arrangement.
U.N.C.I.A.D. has been proposed (by Ceylon)
for inclusion in the agenda and we have no real grounds for opposing
discussion of this under the broad heading "development"; but the views
of the Board of Trade and other departments are awaited.
Item 2.
a
Background papers for the Ministerial meeting: paper
on developed countrie economies has been requested from Canada and
it is proposed that a developing country (as yet unspecified) should
prepare a paper on developing countrieS economies.
This follows last
year's practice and should raise no difficulties for us.
The British
Government will be asked to prepare a paper on the sterling area balance
of payments; this will rise automatically from the official meeting
(see below).
Item 3. Meeting of senior officials: the first question to he
discussed is whether or not there should be a prior meeting of senior
/officials
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.