ABSTRACT
International Commodity Agreements (ICAs) represent attempts to modify the operation of commodity markets so as to achieve various objectives such as price stabilisation or price enhancement. Apart from an international wheat agreement in 1933 and sugar in 1937 none of the agreements set up before the Second World War had consumer representation. Considering the number of primary commodities which enter international trade and which are of interest to developing countries the actual number of ICAs since the Havana Conference has been remarkably few. Stabilisation and support for primary commodity prices remains the main objective and ICAs the main mechanism for achieving it. But the commodities whose earnings are intended to be stabilised amount to only 20 per cent of the export earnings of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, in 1976, its first year of operation, seventeen ACP countries drew SDR 72 million. International commodity agreements are technically difficult to design and operate and politically difficult to negotiate, manage.
