Brazil, China, India playing central role in Doha agenda

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BEIJING, June 21 (Agencies): Completing the Doha round is "crucial" for both developed and developing countries and nations like Brazil, China and India are playing a "central role" in deciding how it will be concluded, World Trade Organisation (WTO) Director-General Pascal Lamy said here yesterday.
"Dealing with domestic concerns is at the top of the list for most political leaders, particularly dealing with the adjustment costs of trade expansion," Lamy said while addressing the 10th International Meeting of the Economic and Social Councils and Similar Institutions here.
"Countries such as Brazil, China and India have championed the Doha Development Agenda as the signature theme of this round, and they are playing a central role in deciding how it will be concluded," he said.
The political leaders of these countries understand well the role that opening up their economies to global competition is playing in fuelling their own economic success, he said noting that "the millions being lifted out of poverty in China and India are a living testimony of that."
"There is no question of them abandoning their conviction, nor of them standing still where they are today. Each has ambitious, forward-looking programmes of trade opening and domestic economic reforms," Lamy, who is visiting China seeking support for concluding the Doha round, said.
At the same time, Lamy emphasised that completing the Doha round is crucial for both developed and developing countries because it is a fundamental tool to control and harness globalisation and to ensure sustainable development.
A fundamental aspect of the on-going trade negotiations - the Doha Development Agenda - is to correct the remaining imbalances in the trade rules which work against developing countries, with a view to find the right balance between efficiency and fairness in the WTO, he said.
The objective is to try to improve the multilateral disciplines and the commitments by all members of the WTO in such a way that they establish a more level-playing field and provide developing countries with better conditions to enable them to reap the benefits of opening trade.
On industrial tariffs, we can, for the first time, address the tariff peaks, high tariffs and tariff escalation remaining in developed countries, he noted.
Turning to agriculture, Lamy said that "in order to rebalance the multilateral trading system in favour of developing countries, we have already agreed that this round has to deliver "effective cuts" in trade-distorting agriculture subsidies in developed countries."
It will also deliver the elimination of the most damaging type of subsidies: export subsidies, with a substantial part. It also has to deliver improved market access through the reduction of tariffs and removal of quantitative restrictions, especially on products where developing countries have a comparative advantage.
At the same time, WTO has recognised already the right of developing countries to protect a number of special products on criteria of food security, livelihood security and rural development and to use a special safeguard mechanism to protect against damaging import surges.
Meanwhile, Antigua urged the WTO yesterday to approve fines of 3.44 billion dollars (2.56 billion euros) per year against the United States, saying that Washington had not complied with a ruling to open its borders to the Internet gambling industry.
The WTO already ruled in March that the US has not complied with previous WTO rulings on the dispute, which was launched by Antigua some four years ago.
Antigua asked the WTO's dispute settlement body to approve its filing for sanctions, saying Washington's stance left it with "no other choice".
The Caribbean island, with a population of about 69,000, is a centre for offshore Internet gaming operations, attracting large numbers of US residents to its casino-style games and betting services.
Experts say the vast majority of online gamblers in the United States use about 2,000 websites run that are largely located in offshore centres like Antigua and Gibraltar.
Americans are the biggest gamblers in the world, accounting for 80 per cent of an estimated 12 billion dollars generated by online gaming.