The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has to complete the Doha Round of talks if it has to deliver on a promise that has languishing in limbo since the turn of the century.
This is the view of most trade experts including Herminio Blanco, Mexico’s candidate for the organisation’s top post with the present director general, Pascal Lamy, due to step down on August 31.
“Unless you have solved in a substantive fashion the Doha Development Agenda, the table will be very empty for starting a new negotiation,” Blanco, 62, said. “So there’s no choice. The WTO has to keep moving and modernising,” he said.
The Doha Round, which began in the Qatari capital in 2001, had three primary areas of negotiation — agriculture, industrial goods and services.
Discussions first stalled over farm subsidies in rich nations, but the US and the EU have in recent years demanded that India, China and Brazil reduce tariffs on manufactured products.
When the Doha talks started, they were labelled as the Doha Development Round, and they “promised benefits in terms of access to markets to developing countries, especially to the least developed countries, so that promise is on the table.”
Qatar meanwhile has taken a strong stand on protectionism in the developed nations. While voicing concern, the host country of the Doha Development Agenda on Monday also stressed that advanced nations did not have the moral grounds to ask developing countries to ease trade barriers.
“It is no longer acceptable to ask the developing countries to reduce tariffs and open their markets to the developed world when the industrialised countries continue with their protectionist measures,” Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister HE Ahmed bin Abdullah al-Mahmoud told the World Trade Agenda, which was organised in conjunction with the 8th World Chambers Congress, that kicked off yesterday.
The protectionist policies have, according to him, resulted in the global economy losing at least $170bn a year which could have been saved had the Doha Round been a success.
The WTO also faces pressures to deliver results from bilateral trade negotiations. The US and the European Union recently announced trade talks that may be completed in two years.
There have also been calls for reforms of the organisation itself.
Geneva-based WTO has had only one director-general from a developing country since its creation in 1995 and no woman has ever been a candidate for the post before this year, when three women are vying for the post.
Mexico’s Blanco is one of eight contenders for the top WTO post.
The other candidates in the running include Indonesia’s Mari Pangestu, South Korean Trade Minister Bark Tae-Ho, Jordan’s Ahmad Thougan Hindawi, Kenya’s Amina Mohamed, Ghana’s Alan John Kwadwo, New Zealand’s Tim Groser, Costa Rica’s Anabel Gonzalez and Brazilian Roberto Carvalho.
The organisation’s General Council is expected to complete the selection process no later than May 31.
Amid all this there is sense creeping in that the Doha Round will stay on the back burner for quite some to come.
