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the developing countries to put questions and receive answers in the light of the bilateral consultations which had been held. This part of the proceedings is recorded in Chapter IB of the Report. For the most part this was a fairly boring exercise which did not elicit a great deal of light. Indeed, when it came to the rub the whole process of bilateral consultations and multilateral examinations produced very few changes and these only in detail - from the revised schemes presented to OECD at the end of the summer. To be fair, however, it must be recalled that these revised submissions were prepared after the consultations with the developing countries at the Special Committee's Session in April of this year and that some of them had been altered, particularly as regards product coverage, in the light of the requests put forward by developing countries at that time.
Socialist Countries of Eastern Europe
9.
If there was a certain degree of cynicism about the extent to which the contributions of the OECD donor countries could be termed a "generalised system of preferences" the cynicism became total when the contributions, or rather non-contributions, of the Soviet bloc were considered. Two of them (Romania and Bulgaria) considered themselves developing countries. The discussion, such as it was, of these countries' "contributions" is recorded in Chapter IA(ii) and Chapter IC of the Report. As things stand at the moment, it is of little interest to Hong Kong.
Commonwealth Consultations
10.
Two Sessions of Commonwealth consultations arranged by the Commonwealth Secretariat, were held on 2nd and 6th October. Walker (Jamaica) was in the Chair. Most of the first meeting consisted of requests to the U.K. and other Commonwealth donor countries to withdraw items from their lists because of the fears of Commonwealth developing countries that they would not gain sufficient in other markets to compensate them for sharing their existing preferences. They considered that the annual UNCTAD reviews on generalised preferences should examine the extent to which "equivalent benefits" had been obtained with a view to "compensation".
11.
The second meeting was devoted entirely to existing and reverse preferences. The Commonwealth countries granting reverse preferences to the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand (especially Jamaica and Trinidad) tried very hard to obtain undertakings that, if they phased out reverse preferences, the additional benefits they received (e.g. Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, banana and citrus arrangements, etc.) would not be affected. The developed countries were not prepared to give these assurances and said that it was up to the developing countries to decide where their best interests lay.
Debate on the "Conclusions"
12. The core of the Session was, however, clearly the debate on the drafting of the Conclusions which took place in the contact group and various drafting groups over almost a fort- night. Here, faced with the determination of the donor countries not to alter their individual schemes in any significant respect, the tactics of the developing countries were to swallow what they had been offered but to prepare the ground for carrying on the battle for improvements in the continuing machinery to be set up to carry out reviews, etc. They also tried to write into the preamble wording to the effect that the present schemes of the donor countries were a good start towards the
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