Publication: Address to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Santiago, Chile, April 14, 1972
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1972-04-14
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2020-01-09
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Robert S. McNamara, President of the World Bank Group, believes that the state of development in most of the developing world today is unacceptable. It is unacceptable, but not because there has not been progress. There has been the total economic growth, measured in Gross National product (GNP) terms, for the developing countries during the first development decade was impressive. For some of these countries it was the most successful decade measured in these gross economic terms in their history. Finally, if the state of development today is unacceptable, we must not waste time looking for villains. Rather, the entire international development community must promptly move forward with practical measures which are conceptually sound, financially feasible, and which can command the requisite public support. He spoke about income distribution, official development assistance efforts, debt problems, trade expansion, and the World Bank’s Five-Year Program.
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“McNamara, Robert S.. 1972. Address to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Santiago, Chile, April 14, 1972. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33159 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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Publication Address to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm, June 8, 1972(World Bank, Washington, DC, 1972-06-08)Robert S. McNamara, President of the World Bank Group, says the relationship between two fundamental requirements need to be examined: the necessity for economic development; and the preservation of the environment. He outlines the steps the Bank is taking to deal with the ramifications of that relationship and illustrates practical measures that are proving to be both feasible and effective. He suggests the most useful direction for the international development community is to assist in the economic advance of the developing countries while responsibly preserving and enhancing the environment. He points out that the broad statistical evidence is clear that there is dangerously skewed distribution of income both within developing nations, and between the collectively affluent and the collectively indigent nations. 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McNamara, President of the World Bank, reported on the Bank’s operations in fiscal year 1972 and reviewed the progress of the Five-Year Program for 1969–73. He assessed the current state of development in member countries and outlined the program for the five years 1974–78. He explored the central issue of the relationship of social equity to economic growth. Given the shortfall in official development assistance, the debt problem, and the procrastination of the developed countries in dismantling discriminatory trade barriers, the Second Development Decade’s 6 percent growth target is not going to be met by many nations. The most persistent poverty is that of the low-income strata, roughly the poorest 40 percent of the total population in all development countries—who are trapped in conditions of deprivation. He argues that an urgent task is to reorient development policies to directly attack the poverty of the most deprived 40 percent of the population. Governments must achieve this without abandoning their goals of overall economic growth. Greater priority is needed to establish growth targets in terms of essential humans needs: nutrition, housing, health, literacy and employment, even at the cost of some reduction in the pace of advance in certain narrow and highly privileged sectors whose benefits accrue to the few.Publication Address to the Columbia University Conference on International Economic Development, New York, February 20, 1970(World Bank, Washington, DC, 1970-02-20)Robert S. McNamara, President of the World Bank Group, discussed the deliberations on the report of the Pearson commission. They preface the second development decade. The report addresses the issues on which a sound, sensible strategy for the seventies must be fashioned. But to be frank, in field after field, we have more questions than answers. 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McNamara, President of the World Bank Group, remarked that progress has been made in both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of life in the vast majority of developing countries. Development has brought death rates down in those countries, but a corresponding adjustment in the birth rate is not automatic, and to date has been negligible. He focused on the basic problems of development: nutrition, employment, income distribution and trade.
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