Read the passage and answer the following questions.

The roots of Nam went back to the friendship between three leaders - Josip Broz Tito, Jawahar Lal Nehru and Gamal Abdel Nasser, who held a meeting in 1956. Sukarno and Kwame Nkrumah strongly supported them. These leaders came to be known as the Five Founders of NAM.

The first Non-Aligned Summit was held in Belgrade in 1961. In the first summit, economic issues had not been very important. By the mid-1970s, they had become the most important issue. As a result, NAM became an economic pressure group. The latest meeting, the 18th Summit was held in Azerbaijan in 2019, which included 120 member states and 17 others.

The challenge for most of the Non-Aligned Countries - a majority of them were categorised as the least developed countries (LDCs) was to be more developed economically and to lift their people out of poverty. A report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development entitled Towards A New Trade Policy and Development was brought in 1972 by the UNCTAD.

In mid 1970s the, NAM's most important issue was:-

Economic issue

The correct answer is Option 1 - Economic issue

Gradually, the nature of non-alignment changed to give greater importance to economic issues. In 1961, at the first summit in Belgrade, economic issues had not been very important. By the mid-1970s, they had become the most important issues. As a result, NAM became an economic pressure group. By the late 1980s, however, the NIEO initiative had faded, mainly because of the stiff opposition from the developed countries who acted as a united group while the non-aligned countries struggled to maintain their unity in the face of this opposition.