United Nations, July 24: The United Nations is launching a commission to analyse and evaluate key factors that inhibit private sector from playing a stronger role in development and fighting of poverty in developing countries. The commission, which will be launched by Secretary- General Kofi Annan tomorrow, has been established as experts increasingly feel that the involvement of private sector was essential for the achievement of the world body's millennium development goals and to meet the challenges facing humanity.
"Its main purpose is to develop strategic recommendations on how to promote a strong, indigenous private sector in developing countries, and to initiate concrete programmes with the highest potential impact in private sector development," says Mark Malloch Brown, administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and convenor of the commission.
Co-chaired by Canada's former finance minister Paul Martin and former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, the group of experts is expected to report back to the secretary general by the end of the year with policy recommendations for countries and multilateral development agencies.
The decision by such prominent persons to co-chair the commission "sends an important signal of their recognition of the role that the private sector is playing as the key engine of growth in developing countries," Annan said.
Top-ranking individuals from the private sector, political and academic sectors are among its members. Bureau Report