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Afrocenter Glossary of Business Terms
ACP COUNTRIES    Context is: trade term.
African, Caribbean, and Pacific countries associated with the European Community under the Lomé Convention. See also Developing Countries; European Community; European Union; Lomé Convention; Reverse Preferences; Tropical Products.
AFRICAN GROWTH AND OPPORTUNITY ACT (AGOA)    Context is: trade term.
Title I of the Trade and Development Act of 2000, which institutionalizes a process for strengthening U.S. relations with African countries and provides incentives for African countries to achieve political and economic reform and growth. The act offers designated beneficiary countries in sub-Saharan Africa duty-free and quota-free U.S. market access for essentially all products through the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program, provides additional security for investors and traders in African countries by ensuring GSP benefits for eight years, and eliminates the GSP competitive needs limitation for African countries. In addition, the act establishes a U.S.-sub-Saharan Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation Forum to facilitate regular trade and investment policy discussions, and it promotes the use of technical assistance to strengthen economic reforms and development, including assistance to strengthen relationships between U.S. firms and firms in sub-Saharan Africa. See also Generalized System of Preferences.
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES    Context is: trade term.
A broad range of countries that generally lack a high degree of industrialization, infrastructure, and other capital investment, sophisticated technology, widespread literacy, and advanced living standards among their populations as a whole. The developing countries are sometimes collectively designated as the Third World and sometimes as the South, because a large number of them are in the Southern Hemisphere. All of the countries of Africa (except South Africa), Asia (except Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan), and Oceania (except Australia, Japan, and New Zealand), Latin America, and the Middle East are generally considered developing countries, as are a few European countries (Cyprus, Malta, Turkey, Poland, and Hungary, for example). Some experts have identified four subcategories of developing countries as having different economic needs and interests: A few relatively wealthy OPEC countries  sometimes referred to as oil-exporting developing countries  share a particular interest in a financially sound international economy and open capital markets. Newly Industrializing Economies (NIEs) have a growing stake in an open international trading system. A number of middle-income countries  principally commodity exporters  have shown a particular interest in commodity stabilization schemes. Some 48 very poor countries (least developed countries) are predominantly agricultural, have sharply limited development prospects during the near future, and tend to be heavily dependent on official development assistance. See also ACP Countries; Additionality; Agency for International Development; Bilateral Aid; Caribbean Basin Initiative; Development Assistance Committee; Economic Cooperation Among Developing Countries; Economic Development; Enabling Clause; Enterprise for the Americas Initiative; Framework Agreement; Generalized System of Preferences; Global System of Trade Preferences; Graduation; Group of 77; International Finance Corporation; International Trade Center UNCTAD/WTO; Least Developed Countries; Lomé Convention; Multilateral Aid; Newly Industrializing Countries; Non-Aligned Movement; North-South Trade; Official Development Assistance; Paris Club; Part IV of the GATT; Public Law 480; Reciprocity; Reverse Preferences; Soft Loan; South-South Trade; Special and Differential Treatment; Structural Change; Substantial New Program of Action; Textiles; Transfer Payments; Tropical Products; United Nations Conference on Trade and Development; United Nations Development Program.
EMBARGO    Context is: trade term.
In international trade, government actions limiting or prohibiting imports and/or exports of goods and/or services from or to a country. Such limitations may be applied by the embargoing country against its own nationals, such as the United States embargo against trade from Cuba, or in concert with other countries against a third country, such as the 1990 United Nations embargo against trade in any form with Iraq or the earlier UN embargo against trade with South Africa. Embargoes may also be applied just against trade in certain products regardless of origin, such as the ban on trade in ivory. See also Boycott; Helms-Burton Act; International Emergency Economic Powers Act; Supply Access.
GROUP OF 77    Context is: trade term.
Originally, the 77 developing countries represented at UNCTAD-I in 1964. The delegates established the precedent of meeting together to attempt to develop common positions on major conference agenda items in advance of plenary UNCTAD meetings. The Group of 77 comprises UNCTAD Groups A (the African and Asian groups, with the notable exceptions of Israel and South Africa) and C (the Latin American group). As of 1999, 132 developing countries were members of the Group of 77, which seeks to develop common positions on trade and development issues under consideration in UNCTAD and other United Nations bodies. See also Developing Countries; Global System of Trade Preferences; Group D; Non-Aligned Movement; North-South Trade; South-South Trade; United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION (IDA)    Context is: trade term.
An affiliate of the World Bank, established in 1960, that extends concessional loans to the least developed countries and other relatively poor countries to finance long-term high-priority development projects. IDA resources are contributed by 33 donor countries. The World Bank would not be able to make loans to many of the poorest countries, including most countries in Africa, without IDA resources. See also Least Developed Countries; Official Development Assistance; Soft Loan; World Bank.
LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES (LLDCs or LDCs)    Context is: trade term.
Some 48 of the world's poorest countries, considered by the United Nations to be the "least developed" of the less developed countries. Most of them are small in terms of area and population, and some are land-locked or small island countries. They are generally characterized by low per capita incomes, low literacy levels and medical standards, subsistence agriculture, and a lack of exploitable minerals and competitive industries. Many suffer from aridity, floods, hurricanes, or excessive animal and plant pests, and most are situated in the zone 10 to 30 degrees north latitude. These countries have low prospect of rapid economic development in the foreseeable future and are likely to remain dependent upon official development assistance for many years. Most are in Africa, but a few are in Asia, the Pacific, and the Western Hemisphere. The abbreviation "LDCs" has increasingly been used in recent years to refer to the least developed countries (although in the 1950s and 1960s, the term "less developed countries" was more or less interchangeable with the term "developing countries"). See also Developing Countries; General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; International Development Association; Official Development Assistance; Part IV of the GATT; Reciprocity; Soft Loan; Special and Differential Treatment; Substantial New Program of Action; Transit Zone.
LOMÉ CONVENTION    Context is: trade term.
An agreement  originally signed in 1975  through which the European Community provides financial and technical assistance to approximately 70 Associated Countries of Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific (the ACP Countries), as well as tariff preferences for many of their products in European markets. The ACP countries no longer grant reverse preferences, as they were required to under earlier the Yaoundé Convention, as a condition for receiving EC preferences. The Lomé Convention also created a mechanism known as STABEX, which was designed to stabilize the export earnings of individual ACP countries from selected commodities. Compensatory payments from the European Community under STABEX are based on the amount by which a country's earnings from exports of specified commodities fall below designated levels. The Lomé Convention, which is renegotiated periodically, was last renegotiated in 1995. See also ACP Countries; Commodity; Compensatory Finance; Developing Countries; European Community; Managed Trade; Reverse Preferences.
NON-ALIGNED MOVEMENT (NAM)    Context is: trade term.
A loose coalition of developing countries that met at the head-of-state level every few years between the 1950s and the 1980s in an attempt to coordinate positions on international political and economic issues. The movement traces its conceptual foundations to the Asian-African Conference at Bandung in 1955, under the inspiration of India (Nehru), Egypt (Nasser), and Yugoslavia (Tito). The first NAM summit conference took place in Belgrade in 1961; the second in Cairo in 1964; the third in Lusaka in 1970; the fourth in Algiers in 1973; the fifth in Colombo in 1976; the sixth in Havana in 1980; and the seventh in New Delhi in 1983. The member countries now meet under the auspices of the Group of 77. See also Developing Countries; Economic Cooperation Among Developing Countries; Economic Development; Global System of Trade Preferences; Group D; Group of 77; North-South Trade; Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries; South-South Trade; United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
TROPICAL PRODUCTS    Context is: trade term.
Traditionally, agricultural goods of export interest to developing countries in the tropical zones of Africa, Latin America, and East Asia, such as coffee, tea, spices, natural rubber, palm oil, bananas, and tropical hardwoods. See also Commodity; ACP Countries; Caribbean Basin Initiative; Common Fund; Forward Market; Integrated Program for Commodities; International Commodity Agreement; Lomé Convention; North-South Trade; Primary Commodity.
UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE ON TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT (UNCTAD)    Context is: trade term.
A subsidiary organ of the UN General Assembly that seeks to focus international attention on economic measures that might accelerate Third World development. Its first conference, UNCTAD-I, was convened in Geneva in 1964, and sessions were held quadrennially up to 1976: UNCTAD-II, New Delhi, 1968; UNCTAD-III, Santiago, 1972; and UNCTAD-IV, Nairobi, 1976. UNCTAD-V met in Manila in 1979, UNCTAD-VI in Belgrade in 1983, UNCTAD-VII in Geneva in 1987, UNCTAD VIII in Cartagena, Colombia, in 1992, and UNCTAD-IX in Midrand, South Africa, in 1996. UNCTAD-X is scheduled for Thailand in 2000. The UNCTAD Trade and Development Board, which exercises the powers of the conference between its sessions, meets twice a year; the main UNCTAD committees  which include those concerned with commodities, shipping, manufactures, invisibles, and financing related to trade and the transfer of technology  meet several times between sessions of the conference. Negotiations in UNCTAD take place principally between Group B (developed countries) and the Group of 77 (developing countries), which separately determine their own positions through intra-group discussions prior to the negotiations. UNCTAD is supported by a permanent secretariat based in Geneva. UNCTAD has been an executing agency for United Nations Development Program technical assistance projects since 1968 and now administers such projects as ports management, regional economic integration, the transfer of technology, the improvement of customs procedures, and other fields related to its programs and activities. As of 1999, UNCTAD had 188 member states. See also Common Fund; Customs; Economic Cooperation Among Developing Countries; Economic Development; Export Credit Guarantee Facility; Generalized System of Preferences; Global System of Trade Preferences; Group B; Group D; Group of 77; Integrated Program for Commodities; International Trade Center UNCTAD/GATT; Non-Aligned Movement; North-South Trade; Restrictive Business Practices; United Nations Development Program.
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