GLOBAL: Is the Doha round delivering on poverty?
JOHANNESBURG, 20 January 2011 (IRIN): Skepticism marked discussions at a just-ended global poverty summit in Johannesburg on whether the Doha Development Round of negotiations at the World Trade Organization could help reduce the number of poor people in developing countries.
The Doha talks, which began in 2001, are aimed at reducing barriers to market access (adgang) throughout the world, with the development of poor countries at the heart of their agenda. They look at three main sectors – agriculture, intellectual property and services.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram, the assistant secretary-general of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs and a leading Malaysian economist, said it had been extremely difficult to measure any socio-economic benefits of such access.
He said studies in his country had shown that a paddy farmer’s (risbondes) child had better nutrition than the children of a rubber farmer who now had access to global markets.
Improving income levels did not automatically imply (betyde) better lives for the poor in any country, as other factors such as the implementation of policies that benefit the poor within countries matter a lot more, said Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel prize-winning economist and chair of the Brooks World Poverty Institute, the organizers of the Johannesburg summit.
He cited the USA as an example of where gross domestic product had grown substantially but not filtered down to the poor, who were worse off than a decade ago. – High economic growth levels had a trickle-up effect, said Stiglitz.
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