World Trade Organization members are “within striking distance” of hitting their self-imposed end of July target for an outline trade liberalization deal, Supachai Panitchpakdi, the director-general of the WTO, said Wednesday, according to the World Bank press review.
Speaking after hearing reports from the main negotiating groups in the Doha global trade round, Supachai said negotiators had “made tangible progress in most areas”. However, Supachai warned the meeting that WTO members were still underestimating the time constraint and needed urgently to speed progress towards agreement.
Ministers from the US, European Union, Brazil, India and Australia, representing key interests in the agriculture talks, are due to meet in Paris on July 10-11, and a ministerial meeting of the Group of 90, mostly low-income, developing countries, will follow in Mauritius on July 13-14.
Tim Groser, chairman of the agriculture talks, said Tuesday that perhaps the toughest issue was how to handle “sensitive” products that countries want to continue protecting. Meanwhile, Brazil has become the 44th country to put in a services offer – but more than 50 WTO members have made no offer and the quality of those on the table was “modest”, the meeting was told.
The International Herald Tribune adds Supachai urged member states to strive for more than a general agreement, but diplomats have already said there is not enough time to hammer out more than what some have termed a “face-saving” political agreement to keep the talks alive.
Trade negotiators aim to produce the first draft of a so-called framework agreement that provides a new basis for farm and industrial tariffs, services and goods by July 9 and to finalize this at a WTO General Council of the 147-nation trade body in Geneva on July 27 and 28. Supachai urged negotiators to refrain from holding out until the end to squeeze concessions from one another.
Meanwhile, in a commentary in Thursdays edition of The Financial Times, Supachai Panitchpakdi writes that critics of the Doha development agenda who suggest these trade negotiations hold little potential benefit for poor nations, bring to mind the old adage that one should not make the perfect the enemy of the good.
– When development advocates state that no agreement is better than a bad agreement, they appear to suggest developing countries are not capable of protecting their own interests at the negotiating table. But the large number of developing countries participating in these negotiations makes it impossible that an agreement could be reached that fails adequately to address developing countries concerns, he writes.
– Perhaps we will not reach agreement at the end of the month. There are sharp differences across a range of issues. But to walk away and start again would be self-defeating. Our members have shown courage recently in taking difficult political decisions that have significant potential benefits for developing countries, Supachai argues.
In other trade news, Reuters notes that after decades of war, mass migration and financial crisis, life will not be getting much easier for Central American countries that now must overhaul their economies to compete with Asia, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC) said on Wednesday.
Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador have based their economies on sending cheap exports, especially clothing, to the United States. The problem is that China and other East Asian countries are able to make the same goods for much less money.
ECLAC sees Central American economies, which also include Guatemala and Costa Rica, growing 3,2 percent in 2004 – unchanged from 2003 and far below levels needed to create jobs and halt a mass exodus of migrants to the United States.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
