International Lending: The Case for Developing Nations

As is peculiarly appropriate for any conference dealing with a rapidly developing and constantly changing area of international economic activity, both the speakers and the participants at this meeting raised more questions than were answered. A principal theme, illustrated by the papers reproduced here, was the need for careful consideration of the problem--legal and commercial-- involved in international lending on the basis of specific information concerning its effect, its promise and the needs involved. Generalizations concerning activities in developing countries are increasingly ineffective as guides to government or business policy or academic inquiry. Recent events in the Middle East confirm the rise of some segments of the Third World to positions of unprecedented economic power with which the developed world must deal.

Of particular importance was the evidence presented at the conference of the need for careful consideration of new organizational forms, both public and private, to permit the effective interchange of capital, raw materials, and goods and services in a manner in which mutual benefit can be perceived by both developed and developing states. At a time when the developed world depends, to an ever greater degree, for supplies of basic raw materials, upon exports from the developing countries and when those countries give voice and action to a rapidly growing desire to enter the twentieth century during the twentieth century, consideration of these questions by the commercial, legal and academic communities must take a high priority. It is hoped that this symposium will contribute to that development.