‘Historic’ world trade pact
NUSA DUA, Indonesia (AFP) — Commerce ministers capped days of hard negotiations yesterday by approving a World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreement on international commerce they hailed as a “historic” boost for the trade body.
The agreement still falls far short of the WTO’s lofty but elusive vision of tearing down global trade barriers through its frustrating 12-year-old Doha Round of talks.
But the accord reached on the Indonesian resort island of Bali nevertheless marks the first global agreement struck by the Geneva-based body since its 1995 founding.
“For the first time in our history, the WTO has truly delivered,” an exhausted but relieved WTO director-general Roberto Azevedo told a closing ceremony.
“We have put the ‘World’ back into the World Trade Organisation,” he told delegates.
However, others took a less optimistic view of the agreement.
Oxfam said the deal was vaguely worded and would do little for the world’s poor despite the WTO’s claim that it will boost trade for the benefit of all, especially developing countries.
“It is all ‘best endeavour’ language, which is the trade negotiators equivalent of crossing fingers behind your back,” Oxfam said in a statement.
The pact includes commitments to facilitate trade by simplifying customs procedures. The meeting also formally accepted Yemen as the group’s 160th member, pending ratification by the Gulf nation’s Parliament.
The Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics estimated in a report this year that the customs measures could create US$1 trillion in economic activity and 21 million jobs if properly implemented.
The report did not detail how those figures were calculated.
WTO officials have conceded however that uncertainty surrounded how effectively the measures would be implemented, especially in underdeveloped nations.
Analysts said the hard-fought nature of the talks indicated how difficult it could be for the body to make real progress on the Doha Round, launched in Qatar in 2001.
Failure in Bali “would have dealt a massive blow to the institution’s prestige,” said Simon Evenett, an international trade expert at Switzerland’s St Gallen University.
“But Bali revealed much about how difficult are negotiations between the large trading nations on big-ticket commercial items and there is no sign they are going to get any easier.”
The agreement was reached after more than four days of haggling in Bali that stretched past the conference’s scheduled Friday close and overnight.
Indonesia’s conference chair Trade Minister Gita Wirjawan called the accord “historic”.
Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron said the deal would “provide a lifeline to the world’s poorest people” by slashing barriers to trade.
Azevedo said it had important symbolic value for Doha.
“The decisions we have taken here are an important stepping-stone toward the completion of the Doha Round,” he said, adding the WTO would soon get to work on a “road map” for reviving Doha.
The Doha Round aims to remove hurdles to commerce and establish a globally binding framework of trade rules fair to both rich and poor countries.
But protectionist disputes among the WTO’s members have foiled agreement.
Azevedo has expressed concern over the rise of alternative regional trading pacts that he fears could render the WTO obsolete if it did not start clinching major worldwide agreements.
The Bali negotiations teetered repeatedly on the brink of collapse due to various differences.