Reinaldo Figueredo, Director of the Global Programme, told an OPEC seminar yesterday that energy issues were essential to national development and were closely bound to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

Figueredo was addressing the seminar in Vienna on behalf of Jose Antonio Ocampo, UN Under Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs.

He emphasised the importance that recent UN conferences had placed on energy access against its varied distribution in developing countries.

Developing countries, he said, were being hampered in their quest to design policy that captured the value-added of energy services through scarcity of infrastructure, finance, technology and skills.

At the same time he noted that they were vulnerable to outside shocks and energy trends as well as the effect of this on long-term investment decisions and international competitiveness.

Figueredo introduced the audience to analysis undertaken by the Global Programme, showing how OPEC countries could help remedy this situation while preserving their strategic objectives.

This analysis can be downloaded below.

The full speech can be downloaded here.

Annex I proposing measures for assisting developing countries through high energy prices can be downloaded here.

Annex II containing statistical modelling results can be downloaded here.