Developing countries and economies in transition face numerous challenges in their industrial development and modernization. Industry needs a supportive climate for growth. Managers must make industries more competitive to sell more of what they make - especially abroad. The industrial base must be expanded to generate increasingly more productive jobs - and all this in an era of global volatility and constant change.

To meet such challenges, governments, institutions and industries wrestle with typical, common problems:

• Difficult policy choices
• The need for good governance
• Obsolete technology
• Lack of investment
• Lack of skilled workers; rising unemployment
• Poor export performance
• Exacting international quality standards
• Access to accurate information
• Pollution control
• Unreliable energy supplies
• Guidance for small businesses
• Struggling women entrepreneurs
• A need for better food processing

The United Nations has committed itself to help developing countries and those in transition to accelerate their development, while meeting social and environmental challenges. A family of UN agencies and institutions is working together to achieve this. One of them is a specialist in industrial affairs. That agency is UNIDO.

UNIDO, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, has been working with governments, business associations and individual companies to solve industrial problems - and equip them to help themselves - for more than 30 years. With the march of globalization, UNIDO has never been needed more.

Why UNIDO? Because there are some challenges in the developing world that can only be met by an international organization. The international private sector wants evidence of good governance, security, sound institutions and competent, fair regulation before it will invest. Quality standards in international markets demand increasingly more and higher technology. A country’s capacity for such continuous change depends on a stable, perpetually improving technical infrastructure for industry, a more strongly rooted industrial culture and skill-base and a national capability to support and encourage efficient industrial growth. Market forces alone cannot spur such development. UNIDO has the necessary experience to help in all these fields.

Because of this long experience, UNIDO understands the needs of governments, industrialists and entrepreneurs everywhere. In many fields, it has rightly earned a reputation as a neutral, honest broker. UNIDO is the world’s most experienced industrial problem solver. Alone among the UN family of agencies and organizations, UNIDO focusses on industrial development and serves as a global forum on its social, economic and technological consequences. Its specialists understand why there are few easy answers to the many industrial problems of the developing world:

• Policy-makers need sound advice on good industrial practices and control - the basis of good governance - to help build international confidence.
• All developing countries need to build new industries - and quickly - to broaden their economic base and to revitalize existing industries.
• Manufacturing is especially important. It can make good use of natural raw materials that would be otherwise wasted; it adds value and generates real wealth; it creates profits for reinvestment and tax revenues to help pay for social advance.
• Industry needs reliable, affordable, efficient and clean energy.
• Manufacturers need reliable statistical information and the latest know-how to compete better, especially in international markets. Achieving difficult international quality standards may require highly specialized help.
• New investment partners are needed to exploit opportunities. It is difficult to attract international investors and to provide support for domestic investors.
• People not only need jobs, but high quality industrial jobs that will enable them to learn new, adaptable skills, earn more money and compete better in a stable, vigorous labour market.
• Harvests are wasted because produce cannot be stored or processed. Growers and producers need industrial partners to help them minimize waste, store, distribute, and export more. Specialists are needed to advise on modern food technology and training.
• Tighter international standards impose new demands on production processes, especially in food technology, and in pollution control. In some cases, better regulation of simple weights and measures may be needed to break through international sales barriers.
• Rapidly changing information technology, particularly when used in industrial processes, is passing some countries by with lasting consequences.
• Small enterprises need better guidance on access to funds, especially manufacturers, who must finance slower cash flow than service providers. Women entrepreneurs often face unfair disadvantages and discrimination. Young entrepreneurs struggle for credit and credibility.
• Global demands for a cleaner environment pose technical problems requiring specialist help. Old industries must adapt. New industries can learn from the mistakes of the past.

All of these problems - and many more - may have been tackled before. Some solutions can be replicated or adapted elsewhere. There is no need to re-invent the wheel when the know-how is already available. But where know-how is not readily available, we know where to find it. And new solutions are called for, we have the capacity to do so. UNIDO has more industrial know-how, and know- where, than any other international agency.

UNIDO offers comprehensive services. They range from simple advice and counsel, to providing engineers to implement global agreements on reducing greenhouse gases and industrial pollution; from helping women dressmakers in Africa to set up textile cooperatives, to transferring appropriate technology from one country to another. UNIDO specialists have helped countries build local capacity to handle their own industrial maintenance, to save on buying it in. They have helped solve sensitive problems of waste management. They have helped create good jobs. They have brought together the right experts with the right know-how.

Services are customized and have been designed to be easily integrated into packages that will address specific country needs. Client countries - and UNIDO’s own experts - can “pick- and-mix” from throughout the Organization to find the optimum solution for any problem. Some problems may use many of UNIDO’s in-house skills and a wide range of its specialists. Others may need only one person to deliver a solution.

At the same time, well-forged links with industrial associations, academic and research institutions, non-governmental organizations and other international agencies ensure that time and resources are not wasted by duplicating services.

UNIDO’s mission is to help countries pursue sustainable industrial development. This is its specialist role in the UN system. The role is vital: industrial growth helps foster economic development; economic development improves tax revenues and makes it possible for governments to achieve lasting social advance and poverty alleviation.

Sustainable industrial development is never easy to achieve. It means balancing concerns for:

• competitive Economy
• sound Environment
• productive Employment.

These “3Es” - economy, employment and environment - are guiding beacons for UNIDO’s approach to its markets, clients and customers, especially in the light of growing international concern over the social and environmental consequences of industrialization.

The social dimension of industrialization is reflected in nearly all activities. Social considerations affect employment, gender, wealth generation, public health, safety at work, industrial profitability, the promotion of entrepreneurship, public-private sector partnerships, economic and industrial planning, and industry support.

From a practical point of view, UNIDO strives to strengthen industrial development in three broad categories:

• industry’s role in the economic structure
• production technology, production processes and production efficiency
• the enabling environment for industrial growth.

In pursuing this strategy, UNIDO practises what it preaches. It endeavours to target services according to need, providing the right mix of integrated services for the job. Getting the mix right relies on dialogue with clients and assessment by experts. Many clients already know exactly what they need, but others want a more fundamental assessment of how best to shape their policies and improve their existing plans. In all cases, market failures need to be identified so that intervention can be decisive. At the same time, different stages of industrialization require different forms of assistance. “Gap analysis” - which studies the difference between what is needed and what exists - reveals where efforts need to be concentrated in terms of services, expertise, training, equipment, technology and techniques. UNIDO then aims to help fill the gap. Another of UNIDO’s proven skills: its abilities as an honest broker.

Honest brokers play a vital part in building coordination and cooperation. UNIDO’s reputation as an honest broker has been won through many years of bringing together people, governments and institutions to find solutions to problems; through finding investors for projects and industries; through transferring technology; through matching needs with benefits, donors with recipients.

Because UNIDO provides a focus for the issues concerned, its role as a global forum is also crucial. UNIDO is the developing world’s most important repository of industrial information and knowledge. This is important in a technological age where information and knowledge can sometimes be obscured within a blizzard of data. UNIDO saves time for busy policy and decision makers. To disseminate knowledge and best practices widely and ensure issues are discussed usefully, UNIDO organizes international conferences and fora, as well as publishing manuals and guides to the best industrial practices.

UNIDO addresses every problem in a systematic way, with reference to the 3Es and to all relevant social issues. Advisory and technical services are grouped under the appropriate “E” of the 3Es. The result is three baskets of services, containing five, seven and four components respectively. Each component usually comprises a module of several related services. These are the baskets from which to pick and mix the combination of services most suited to answer any particular country’s needs. They are the building blocks for UNIDO’s tailor-made solutions:

Competitive ECONOMY

• Industrial Governance and Statistics
• Investment and Technology Promotion
• Industrial Competitiveness and Trade

Sound ENVIRONMENT

• Sustainable Energy and Climate Change
• Environmental Management
• Montreal Protocol

Productive EMPLOYMENT

• Private Sector Development
• Agro-industries

UNIDO has one other priority in trying to make a difference. It is especially concerned with the world’s least developed countries, particularly those in Africa.

Africa has the largest concentration of countries in the greatest need of help with industrial development. Nearly every UNIDO service has been of use at some time, somewhere in Africa, during the last three decades. Helping these developing countries nations to solve their problems is UNIDO’s greatest challenge.