Future of the shipping dialogue in UNCTAD

UNCAD has played a central role in the development of international shipping policies, particularly those of developing countries. While comprehensively addressing all shipping issues affecting both the industry and the maritime trade of developing countries. UNCTAD has concentrated its greatest efforts on policies designed to achieve those objectives. These policies also reflected the then existing international environment of confrontation. East/West ideological conflicts and the North/South divide. The results were far from satisfactory, although a number of international agreement were reached under the auspices of UNCTAD. The end of the cold war and the emergence of the single economic system (the market place) has brought about far-reaching changes in UNCTAD, its secretariat, its intergovernmental machinery and the substantive content of its secretariat, its intergovernmental machinery and the substantive content of its deliberations. It is expected that the shipping dialogue in UNCTAD in the 1990s will be significantly different in content and structure. This article attempts to point to possible courses of action that will be taken in UNCTAD fora in the area of shipping in the context of promoting a competitive services in developing countries.