Prerequisites for negotiation. From an empirical, if not theoretical, point of view, the following conditions seem to have to be met if an international conference on raw materials is to be an agreement: the international commodity bodies (ICC) are independent and autonomous legal personalities, with their respective functions, their rules of procedure and the board of directors as the supreme authority. The provisions of ICIs and ISIs are managed by the relevant international commodity organisations. In the post-war period, there were four international agreements on sugar. The first agreement entered into force in January 1954, the second in 1959. The economic provisions of the latter were suspended in 1962 following the Cuban crisis of 1960, although the other provisions were extended until 1968. The United States has completed recent efforts to renegotiate the ICA and the text of the Seventh International Coffee Agreement (ICA 2007) was adopted on 28 Adopted by the International Coffee Council on 27 September 2007. The new ICA aims to strengthen the OIC`s role as a forum for government consultation, increase its contribution to meaningful market information and market transparency, and ensure that the organization plays a unique role in developing innovative and effective capabilities in the coffee sector. Features of the new agreement include a first advisory forum on coffee-sector finance to promote the development and dissemination of innovation and best practices enabling coffee producers to better manage the financial aspects of intrinsic volatility and risks related to competitive and developing markets. Other notable changes include expanding the Organization`s work in providing relevant statistical and market information and strengthening efforts to develop, review and implement capacity-building projects that are particularly important for smallholder farmers in developing countries` major trading partners. Alternatives. Various efforts have been made to invent mechanisms other than international agreements on raw materials, to transfer purchasing power to less developed countries, whose incomes were either cyclical or chronically low. Some of these alternatives, such as the commodity reserve currency proposals (UN 1964a), would serve as the main instrument of economic management in (relatively) free corporate societies, to the detriment of the objectives of external aid and international monetary “reform”, to the detriment of the role of the price system.
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