UN General Assembly
1963

It was clearly shown that the entire amount of technical and financial assistance which the developed countries had given to the under-developed and developing countries in any given year was, in fact, less than the loss suffered by the latter due to the depressed prices of their export products and the steadily higher prices they had to pay for their imports from the industrial countries. This stern statistical fact seemed to make a mockery of the entire system of foreign economic aid and exposed it as a tissue of noble intentions nullified by the realities of trade and profit. There was talk in Manila of an Asian common market, but we know that at this stage such talk is little better than whistling in the dark. The night is too full of the established ghosts of economic and financial power, and we need the benign spirit of the United Nations to exorcise them from the economic world of the under-developed and developing countries.