To attract investment on a large scale, however, it is necessary to have a reasonably effective judiciary, an adequately skilled labour force and other facilities; these are by no means always available and here it is the developing countries that need to act. It is on account of problems such as these that investment from the industrialised countries still goes in the first place to so-called emerging markets and to only a minor extent to the poorest countries. The situation also calls for structural adjustments in the industrialised countries, a process that leads in turn to new job opportunities; these countries have to focus on new activities of a different kind that can carry higher wage costs, for example. This is the same in principle as what happened earlier in Sweden, for instance. We have moved from a state more than a century ago when nearly everyone worked in agriculture to one where first manufacturing and now service industries have taken over as the dominant source of employment. This is the process that has doubled our material prosperity many times over. But it has not been painless. While many people became better off, the need for adjustment excluded others from production. Countries like Sweden can now afford extensive social safety-nets but in developing countries these are often absent. And although barriers to international trade have been greatly reduced in recent decades, there are still a good many obstacles in both industrialised and developing countries.
In any event, it is important to work for a level of debt that is more sustainable, particularly in the poorer countries. Much has in fact been done in this respect. The IMF’s and the World Bank’s joint initiative for debt relief for the poorest and most 1 indebted countries was launched in 1996. In contrast to earlier efforts here, this initiative assembled all a country’s creditors, including the international financial institutions, to provide debt relief. The aim was to reduce the debts of poor and heavily indebted countries to sustainable levels and combine this with better conditions for increased growth. In 1998 it was decided to increase and accelerate debt relief in the context of the initiative. To a large extent this decision was a result of representations by church and other non-government organisations. To date, 24 countries have been promised debt relief equivalent to a total of over USD 20 billion at current values. Debt relief for the countries included in the initiative is calculated to cost a total of USD 33 billion. It is envisaged that the funds which debt relief makes available in the countries concerned will be used in the first place for increased efforts to combat poverty. Why, it may be asked, do we not write off all the debts of the poorest countries? The amounts involved may seem relatively small for the international community as a whole but that is not the case in relation to the resources that are currently available.