106/YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!merits), textiles and clothing (51), steel and steel products (39),
electronics (3 7) and footwear (21) (UNDP, 1992).
Moreover, technology markets are also highly protected. Potential
losses could amount to some S20 billion (UNDP, 1992). Beyond the
theft by MNCs of Third World communities' ancestral heritage (see
section on intellectual property rights), the cost of acquiring techno
logical patents has risen sharply. Between 1981 and 1988, trade in
machine goods (and the related technology) between industrialised
countries grew at an annual average of 10.2 per cent. Such trade
grew only at an annual average of 1.5 per cent with developing
countries. As a result, most Third World countries have been left on
the margins of trade in technological innovation. Increased trade
between industrialised countries has boosted their own dynamism
and competitiveness, and prevented the rest of the world from
sharing in the fruits of research (UNDP, 1992).Limits on the Right of the South's Citizens to Look for
Work in the North
We have already seen how the governments of the North skim off the
cream of the South and the East's 'brains'. At the same time, they
strictly limit the right of people from the South to sell their labour in
the North.
The 1992 edition of the UNDP's World Report on Human
Development clearly challenges restrictions on the freedom of
movement of people from the South to the North. Such restrictions
have been put in place by the governments of the industrialised
capitalist countries.
One of the major sources of lost revenue for the Third World is the
restrictions on the labour force. According to a prudent estimate from
the UNDP, the cumulative loss of hard currency remittances for
countries of the South, due to the suspension of legal immigration in
the 1980s, is in the range of S250 billion (UNDP, 1992).
Showing equal prudence, the UNDP 1992 report calls for the
abrogation of restrictive measures taken by governments of the
North to limit the free movement of people from the South to the
North. Were these measures to be lifted, the UNDP estimates that
every year 2 per cent of the Third World workforce would decide to
emigrate. If these workers earned the minimum wage, in line with the
poverty threshold in industrialised countries (about S5.000 per