Less than one year after the 10th ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Nairobi in December, 2015, there is now a move for holding its next ministerial conference (MC11). The WTO General Council (GC) in the first week of October this year formally accepted Argentina's offer to host the MC11 in late 2017. In the meeting, the WTO members also reviewed implementation of recommendations of both the previous two ministerial conferences' (MC9 in Bali and MC10 in Nairobi) that appear slow and disappointing. Bali conference agreed to reduce the cost of cross border trade by adopting Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), allow public stockholding for food security in developing countries for a temporary period and enhance the coverage of market access to the LDCs. Nairobi ministerial decided to relax rules of origin for the LDCs exportable products, reduce excessive subsidies and credit provide by the developed countries on agriculture exports and continue negotiation on special safeguard mechanism for food security.
Interestingly, the GC meeting was followed by a 'mini ministerial' meeting in Oslo on October 22-23, 2016. And immediately before the meeting, WTO Director General (DG) Roberto Azevedo sat with the Head of Delegations (HODs) of the member-countries at an informal meeting on September 30, 2016.
Thus three important meetings to determine the future course of multilateral trade regime took place within a month with many questions unanswered, especially to developing and Least Developed Countries (LDCs).
The GC, the organisation's highest decision- making body after the ministerial conference, experienced a kind of pressure from the developed countries as they expressed their less or 'almost zero interest' to carry over the Doha programme. In this meeting, the WTO chief requested the members to deepen their engagement 'as they work to determine possible outcomes' for their MC11. Earlier, in the informal meeting of the HOD, some member-countries especially developed ones, also made similar kinds of call to push the negotiation process 'in order to have a smooth road to Buenos Aires than they had for the previous ministerial' in Nairobi in last year.
Several reports, done by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) and Third World Network (TWN), unveiled many inside stories of these three meetings. These stories indicate that intense efforts are there to make a fresh start of multilateral trade negotiations with prominence of 'new issues' as well as sideline or drop some of the existing unfinished agendas.
PROLONGED UNFINISHED AGENDA: THE Doha round, officially dubbed as Doha Development Agenda (DDA), was initiated in 2001 when trade ministers of the WTO member-countries met in their fourth ministerial conference (MC4) in the capital of Qatar. To put it simply, it is a comprehensive negotiation framework among the member-countries to 'reduce import taxes or tariffs on everything from wheat to cars. Negotiation for restricting countries' use of subsidies for farmers and fishermen; lowering taxes and regulatory barriers that affect the cross-border trade in services, such as banking and consulting and new intellectual property rules on things such as drugs and copyrighted works' are also there. The idea is that after a successful negotiation, member- countries will agree on a set of multilateral trade rules that will govern the global trade in a balanced manner by addressing the concerns of the poor countries.
After the round started in 2001 and deliberations picked up in various negotiation committees, the MC5 in Cancun culminated in the first major failure to agree on how to move forward. Momentum was restored in 2004 as negotiators agreed in Geneva on a framework (July Package) to address a number of selected issues including agriculture. In the same year and the later year, a number of small groups in meetings, based on the July Package, searched for a common ground in three major contentious areas: agriculture, services and industrial products (non-agriculture market access or NAMA). These attempts, however, failed to move the complex and tricky Geneva negotiation machinery forward. Though scheduled to be complete in 2005, there had been little progress of MC6 in Hong Kong in late 2005. Hong Kong ministerial compelled the developed countries to allow duty-free market access for 97 per cent of the products of LDCs. In 2008, an informal ministerial meeting with selected members attempted to address some of the barriers. But, at the end, ministers failed to reach an agreement once more. The following two MCs in 2009 and 2011 were almost fruitless. In 2013, little development took place in Bali and it failed to push the negation for a reasonable conclusion in 2015 in Nairobi. Manfred Elsig and Cedric Dupont, in their article titled 'Persistent Deadlock in Multilateral Trade Negotiation: The Case of Doha' argued that "the deadlock in Doha round is a result of a series of overlapping and chronologically sequential games, rather than as a single overall game."
The single undertaking structure, nothing agreed upon until everything agreed, itself became a big impediments of the negotiation. Moreover, sharp rifts between developed countries (led by the United States and the European Union) and developing countries (led by Brazil, India, China and South Africa) on farm subsidies and industrial tariffs turned the whole negotiation process prolonged, tiresome and disappointing. LDCs, including Bangladesh have long been waiting to get 100 per cent market access to developed as well as advanced developing countries, easy rules of origins and other trade benefits. Â
NEW ISSUES: Though the Nairobi ministerial declaration kept the continuation of Doha round negotiation open, it has gradually become clear that prolonged stalemate is unlikely to end in near future. Moreover, series of bilateral, regional and mega-regional trade agreements are on the rise. So, multilateral trade regime is at a stake again.
The developed countries are now seriously pursuing new issues for negotiations under the WTO framework. They have a valid argument that global trade and economic scenario have changed significantly and will continue to change in near future. So, without recognising the changes and dragging the old issues for an unending period, there will be no long-term benefit especially for the poor countries. Advanced developing countries, opposing the arguments, claimed that without addressing the unresolved issues of the Doha agenda, it would be unfair to start negotiation on new issues like e-commerce. New issues include: investment, SMEs and MSMEs, global value chains, government procurement, consideration of Mode 5 in services, environmentally harmful subsidies, among other issues.
But, the changing landscape of global geo-politics indicates that sticking to the Doha negotiation will not be a viable option for developing countries or global south. Moreover, the interests of developing countries or global south are not well converged at all. India is pushing for public stockholding of foods on the plea of food security which is not fully endorsed by many other developing countries. So, they have to do some logical compromise with developed countries so that the latter ones can't abandon the multilateral trade regime with their mega-regional deals.
The Oslo mini-ministerial meeting already signalled that WTO members have to move ahead with small but influential grouping in the upcoming months. The meeting was attended by Argentina, Australia, Benin, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, the EU, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Japan, Lesotho, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Pakistan, Russia, Rwanda, Switzerland, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, and the US.
At least three more informal and formal mini-ministerial meetings will take place within next 10 months. The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January will see an important meeting on the sideline. Another will be on the sideline of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) annual spring gathering in Paris. The third will be in September 2017 which will ultimately determine the fate of the Doha round in Buenos Aires.
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WTO: Multilateral trade regime at stake again
Asjadul Kibria | Published: November 05, 2016 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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