IRIN Focus on the WTO Seattle Round

African countries at this week’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial Conference will be looking to transform international trade regulations which they say currently work against them. No agenda has been set for the Seattle meeting which opened on Tuesday, but the priority for African countries at the conference includes the implementation of WTO agreements on special and differential treatment for developing nations; the correction of imbalances in previous WTO agreements; and improved market access for exports from developing countries. Conflicting demands According to the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), the developing world “wants the WTO to slow down, review past agreements and take stock of the implications of further drastic multilateral trade liberalisation for vulnerable countries. They are concerned about the lack of progress made thus far in liberalising market access for products important to them.” The European Union (EU), however, is calling for a much more comprehensive round of negotiations to tackle new topics such as investment, competition policy and the inclusion of labour and environment protection measures. “The EU knows it might have to make concessions so it wants as many items as it can get on the agenda so it can horse trade,” an international trade specialist told IRIN. The United States broadly supports the EU, but wants a more limited round of discussions “on issues important to its commercial interests,” an SAIIA report released last week said. Unfair market access Thus far, trade liberalisation under the Uruguay Round has been an unequal bargain with market access representing the key issue between developing and developed countries. “The costs of Northern protectionism for developing countries are huge,” Oxfam said in a policy paper in November. “Developing countries are losing up to US $700 billion in annual export earnings as a result of trade barriers maintained by industrialised countries.” Agricultural products are a key export for developing countries. While they have been pressured to liberalise their markets, they face significant tariff and non-tariff barriers in developed countries. In 1998, for every dollar OECD countries gave in development assistance, they gave three dollars to their own farmers. Primary commodities provide more than 90 percent of the foreign exchange of 20 African countries. Textiles and clothing are another important export sector for southern countries. The developed world is committed to removing quota restrictions from 33 percent of their textiles and clothing imports by 2001. However, by that date the EU and US will have done away with restrictions from only 5 percent of products that are important to developing countries. Oxfam calculated that export earnings of developing countries could increase by US $127 billion a year if developed countries opened their markets to textile and clothing exports. “It’s totally bizarre, you make the poorest countries pay the most,” the trade specialist said. “The real rules behind WTO are that you climb up the ladder and then pull it up behind you.” Other concerns Other areas of concern for the developing world include the WTO Trade-Related Intellectual Property (TRIPs) Agreement which obliges countries to “adopt a strict patent regime, designed by and for the industrialised countries,” Oxfam argued. Investment rules are also being revisited. Rather than removing all government controls over direct foreign investment, critics stress that the rights of investors should be balanced with their responsibilities and have sustainable development at their heart. The developing world is far from a homogeneous bloc. WTO provisions for the special and differential (S&D) treatment was supposed to assist the poorest members. S&D is, however, under threat. “Developing countries must retain the flexibility to make decisions about how quickly and how far to liberalise, including the ability to shelter vulnerable and strategically important sectors from competition where this is important for achieving overall national development goals,” the Oxfam policy paper said. The Uruguay Round of negotiations took from 1986 to 1994 to conclude, straining the financial and human resources capacity of many developing countries that tried to participate effectively. The Seattle Round is hoped to be far shorter, lasting around three years. “A major challenge for the WTO is to increase the voice of smaller and poorer countries in the formulation and implementation of international trade regulations,” Oxfam said. “Currently, developing countries account for three-quarters of the WTO membership, yet the WTO agenda is dominated by the interests of the major trading blocs and corporations.”