South Centre: Add value at home, close the tech gap- Gamani Corea's agenda is more urgent than ever

SRI Lanka and the wider Global South should decide where the value is added in their supply chains, push for credible technology transfer, and demand a fairer financial architecture, South Centre Executive Director Dr. Carlos Maria Correa said in the Dr. Gamani Corea 100th Birth Anniversary Oration.

- BY DEVAN DANIEL

He tied those priorities to Corea's record at UNCTAD and his role in building Southern coalitions, saying the economic weight of developing countries makes the agenda timely.

"The real fight is where the value is added," Carlos said, urging commodity producers to process minerals and raw goods domestically to capture jobs, fiscal revenue and scale.

He cited Indonesia's export restrictions on unprocessed minerals as a policy that forces investment into upstream processing. Developing countries now account for about 46% of global GDP and more than 25% of global R&D spending, he said, figures that give leverage if they coordinate positions and pool capabilities.

"The scenario is changing and there is hope, particularly if there is South-South cooperation."

Carlos linked today’s economic bottlenecks to the agenda Corea drove at UNCTAD from the mid-1970s.

He recalled the integrated program for commodities proposed in 1976 to reduce price volatility, producer-consumer agreements on coffee, cocoa, sugar, tea, timber and rubber, and the Common Fund for Commodities created in 1980, which still finances stabilisation and value-addition projects.

Corea had also treated debt distress as a systemic issue, pressed for collective solutions, and opened the way for the first nonofficial multilateral restructurings. On market power, Carlos cited UN principles on restrictive business practices that shaped the first generation of competition laws across developing countries.

The oration revisited the 1974 UN General Assembly declaration on a New International Economic Order, which Gamani Corea helped translate into a work program.

Carlos said its principles, policy space to choose development models, sovereignty over natural resources, preferential treatment for developing nations, and oversight of transnational corporations, remain unresolved.