Papers and Proceedings of the Sixth Pacific Trade and Development Conference : Technology Transfer in Pacific Economic Development

Abstract

The Sixth Pacific Trade and Development Conference was held in Mexico City from 15 to 20 July, 1974 to search for a new objective for the conference series. The first conference in this series was held in Tokyo in January 1968 ; the second in Hawaii in January 1969 ; the third in Sydney in August 1970; the fourth in Ottawa in October 1971; and the fifth again in Tokyo in January 1973. The conference started with a very simple premise. That is we people in the extended Pacific area, including Latin America and Asian developing countries, should pay keen attention to economic devel opment and trade expansion among our neighbours who have huge potential for future development. This potential has tended to be neglected in the past. Fortunately, since our conference series started, the Pacific trade and development studies have established their influence upon trade and development policies in the Pacific-Latin American-Asian region.

We held this year's Conference for the first time outside the more advanced Pacific countries, in Mexico City, one of the most thriving centers in the less industrially developed nations. The Pacific trade and development studies have always to search for a new direction, especially in the present uncertainties in the international monetary and trading system after the oil crisis. The new direction should be the acceleration of modernization and industrialization of developing economies, including the oil producing areas. Technology transfer, foreign direct investment, trade, and even oil money will play a critical role if they are utilized appropriately. This book contains the papers and, proceedings of the Sixth Conference, discussion at which focussed on those important issues.

"The role of technology transfer in Pacific economic development," the theme we chose for the Mexican conference, was a topic of wide interest in Latin America and a large number of experts partici pated in the conference from various parts of that region. Unfortu~ nately the book was not able to include two or. three papers for either they were written in Spanish or not presented to but came after the conference. Also we missed comments from some papers, and the summary of discussion for all papers mainly due to language difficulties. We have to apologize to those contr ibutors. However, all of them will be taken up in a Spanish- language version of this book which will be published somewhat later by the Mexican Organizing Committee.

Finally, we are deeply grateful to all the participants, Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia and El Colegio de Mexico who made possible the success of the conference. We are also indebted to the Government and business circles in Mexico and the Asia Foundation for their financial support to the conference.