World Food Problem

No excessive sacrifice is expected or needed from any one nation, and if each nation does the best it can, the burden of all will be lightened. Our common and immediate effect should be to neutralize the rise in import costs so that no developing country is starved of essential development inputs, or is obliged to add to its unbearably heavy debt burden.

The World Food Conference held in Rome last year was a welcome attempt to view the food problem in all its aspects—production, trade, inputs, long-term investment and security. Several initiatives have emerged from the Conference. It should be our endeavour to follow these up with energy and speed, and implement the commitments undertaken in Rome. Without rapid and effective measures to increase food production in developing countries, the world food problem will continue to nullify a great deal of our developmental efforts in other sectors.

I shall now turn to one other issue which my Government deems of utmost importance and which we consider an essential part of the new international economic order. If, indeed, there is to be a diffusion of economic well-being through the entire world, there is need for the developing countries themselves to co-operate with each other, and to break away from the old colonial pattern of dealing with each other through a developed partner. I am not for one moment suggesting the exclusion of the developed world, but I am advocating a serious effort on the part of all developing countries to remove barriers of attitude and ignorance about each other so that they may participate in each other’s development process, thereby helping each other to become economically stronger.