Recovery from Global Recession Depends on Shared Understanding of Interdependence

 

of Actions, Steering World’s Economies Effectively, Says Secretary-General

The following is a message of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, as delivered by Ján Kubiš, Executive Secretary, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (ECE), to the Astana Economic Forum, in Kazakhstan, today, 3 May:

It gives me a great pleasure to send greetings to the Fourth Astana Economic Forum.  Three years ago, when the First Astana Economic Forum was convened, the world was on the verge of a global recession that turned out to be the deepest since the 1930s.  We are still recovering from this crisis, and that recovery is very uneven. 

In Asia, many countries have returned to strong levels of economic growth.  But high unemployment and debt problems are hampering the recovery in Europe and North America, and the slow recovery there is dampening progress elsewhere.

Policy responses in one part of the world continue to have an effect on prospects in others.  Over the past six months, for instance, monetary stimulus in the United States and Europe, designed to pull up their economies, had the unintended side effect of making investing in emerging economies more attractive.  Yet massive capital inflows are posing challenges to the countries receiving them.  How to channel them to long-term investments for development?  How to avoid massive outflows when global conditions change again?

Mutual progress, the theme of this forum, depends on arriving at a shared understanding of how our actions depend on one another.  We need to share ideas on how to address our common problems, how to avoid the damaging effects of volatile capital flows and gyrating food and energy prices, and how to steer all the world’s economies towards more stable and sustainable development for all.

We have major opportunities to push for such common progress later this month at the Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries in Istanbul, and next year at the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development.  I look forward to your contributions in Astana and beyond.  Please accept my best wishes for the success of your deliberations.

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For information media • not an official record