Return to Lima Declaration
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The Lima Declaration and Plan of Action on Industrial Development and Cooperation was adopted in 1975 at a Conference sponsored by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO). It has, in legal terms, exhortatory force only; that is, it sets out recommendations on assistance to developing countries. The Declaration does not have treaty status and therefore does not require signature or ratification. It is not, and never was, binding on the Australian Government under international law. The Australian Government formulates its policy on developing countries on the basis of what it judges to be the national interest.
At the time of its adoption, Australia gave only qualified support to the declaration. Since then the Lima Declaration has been superseded by the more recent International Development Strategy for the Fourth United Nations Development Decade (IDS IV) which is based on the view that responsibility for the promotion of economic and social development rests primarily with the governments of developing countries. Like the Lima Declaration, IDS IV is not binding on the Australian government. That said, an important point in both the Lima Declaration and the International Development Strategy, with which the Australian Government wholeheartedly agrees, is that it is appropriate, in trading with developing countries, to accord them differential and favourable treatment. Indeed, in 1966, long before the Lima Declaration, Australia led the world in conferring concessional tariffs to imports to Australia from developing countries under the Australian System of Tariff Preferences (ASTP).
Under ASTP, tariff concessions are granted to developing countries to facilitate their economic development by helping them to compete with developed countries in the Australian market. The current scheme extends a uniform preference margin of five percentage points on most dutiable imports of developing country origin. This means that developing countries face a tariff on dutiable goods which is five percentage points less than the tariff applicable to the same goods from an industrialised country. The ASTP does not contain any country or product specific quota restrictions or similar mechanisms to limit the automatic threshold provisions which would trigger the removal of products or countries from the scheme.
Accordingly, the ASTP offers developing countries predictable and stable benefits, and its administrative simplicity ensures that it is easily understood and readily used by all beneficiaries. In 1992, almost 96% of Australia’s dutiable imports from developing countries entered at a preferential rate under the ASTP.
Some adjustments to developing country preference arrangements have been made recently to take into account concerns of domestic industry about the effect of preference margins to Australian industry. From 1st July 1993, developing country preferences extended to Singapore, Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea and Taiwan will commence to phase out because the strength of these economies and the capacity of their exports to compete in the Australian market without the assistance of a concessional tariff. The Government also decided that preferences for textiles, clothing and footwear, chemicals, fruit juice and certain foods will begin phasing out from 1st July 1993 for all beneficiaries except the Least Developed Countries and the South Pacific Island Territories. These industries in Australia are facing substantially improved competition from developing countries at the same time as they are undergoing structural adjustment under tariff reduction and other programs. Tariff preferences are no longer required for developing countries to compete in the Australian market in these industries.
Return to Lima Declaration
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