UN General Assembly
1989

In the middle of the present decade, average real commodity prices had reached the lowest level ever recorded since the great depression of the 1930s. The African countries, which are heavily dependent on their primary exports, have been Particularly hard hit by the drop in world prices, in 1987-1988 the prices of cocoa, copper, wood, iron and so forth were more than 30 per cent lower than those in 1980. Earnings from these commodities correspondingly fell at a time when our countries, faced with ever increasing and more urgent social demands and economic constraints, continued to founder in a state of chronic and absurd indebtedness. Today this external debt has taken such a place in the concerns of states that it is concealing the real problems of development in the third world. Undoubtedly specific measures have recently been taken by States and institutions to alleviate the burden of debt of a number of countries in the third world, and here we should like to express our profound gratitude to those countries which, in an upsurge of solidarity, have waived either totally or partially the public credits they held in the case of Togo.