World Trade Organization (WTO) chief Supachai Panitchpakdi warned yesterday that failure to make substantial progress in trade liberalization talks would be a "recipe for disaster" for the global trading system.
"We have not been making the kind of progress that we have expected; we have worked very hard ... but up to now we have not seen much substantial results," he told a two-day WTO mini-ministerial that opened in Dalian, China yesterday.
He was lamenting years of drawn-out negotiations in the WTO Doha Round of talks that began in 2001 but have missed nearly all its targets for liberalizing world trade.
PHOTO: AFP
"If we keep on like this ... the talks will be full of divergences and opposition as opposed to convergences ... this will be a recipe for disaster and failure," Supachai said.
Some 32 trade ministers are taking part in the Dalian meeting, out of the WTO's full membership of 148. Yesterday's opening discussions were to focus on agriculture, officials said.
The Doha Round aims to expand free trade in a way that benefits poor nations but the developing world is accusing developed nations of refusing to give up a trade system largely skewered in favor of the rich countries.
Members faced their biggest crisis in 2003 as the Cancun summit in Mexico collapsed in a confrontation between rich and poor over trade in services and agricultural export subsidies.
However, last week at the G8 meeting of industrialized nations in Scotland, the US and the EU pledged to get rid of the trade-distorting agricultural export subsidies as a means to boost the ongoing WTO talks.
The EU and the US are broadly hoping that developing countries will offer concessions on trade in services and industrial goods in exchange for an end to their agricultural subsidies.
Member states are hoping that a set of trade "formulas and modalities" that define trade liberalization and market access can be hammered out in the coming weeks and presented at a WTO ministerial meeting in Hong Kong in December.
"We need strong support and positive signals which can be translated into progress at the negotiating table in [late July talks] in Geneva," Supachai said.
Chinese Trade Minister Bo Xilai (薄熙來), host of the meeting, meanwhile urged states to accept 2010 as the deadline for the end of export subsidies and to quickly reach a consensus on thresholds for market access and agricultural supports.
"I have put forward ... suggestions to the EU, India, Brazil and the United States," Bo said.
"The first is whether we can strive to finish a consensus concerning a time frame for the elimination of export subsidies, namely identifying 2010 as a deadline," he said.
"The second, in the area of market access and domestic support for agriculture, is on whether we can reach a consensus for tier divisions and thresholds for each tier," he said, referring to the detailed technical language defining the two areas of trade.
However, he also played down expectations from the Dalian meeting.
"If we can make even small progress then I think it would be a contribution [from China]," Bo told Supachai in a bilateral meeting.
Observers of the ongoing negotiations voiced widespread pessimism of a successful outcome.
"World trade talks are at a crisis point," said Celine Charveriat of Oxfam International, a group advocating fair trade for poor nations.
"With less than six months to go before the WTO Ministerial in Hong Kong, negotiators are miles from consensus and have failed even to produce draft texts for discussion," she said.
Charveriat said the G8 missed the opportunity to give the talks the boost they needed.
"Their rhetoric is sadly mis-matched with the state of WTO negotiations in Geneva where rich country intransigence and self-interest is blocking progress and jeopardizing the whole round," Charveriat said.
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
Japan and the Philippines yesterday signed a defense pact that would allow the tax-free provision of ammunition, fuel, food and other necessities when their forces stage joint training to boost deterrence against China’s growing aggression in the region and to bolster their preparation for natural disasters. Japan has faced increasing political, trade and security tensions with China, which was angered by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remark that a Chinese attack on Taiwan would be a survival-threatening situation for Japan, triggering a military response. Japan and the Philippines have also had separate territorial conflicts with Beijing in the East and South China
RSS