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.
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined
‘CARRIER KILLERS’: The Tuo Chiang-class corvettes’ stealth capability means they have a radar cross-section as small as the size of a fishing boat, an analyst said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday presided over a ceremony at Yilan County’s Suao Harbor (蘇澳港), where the navy took delivery of two indigenous Tuo Chiang-class corvettes. The corvettes, An Chiang (安江) and Wan Chiang (萬江), along with the introduction of the coast guard’s third and fourth 4,000-tonne cutters earlier this month, are a testament to Taiwan’s shipbuilding capability and signify the nation’s resolve to defend democracy and freedom, Tsai said. The vessels are also the last two of six Tuo Chiang-class corvettes ordered from Lungteh Shipbuilding Co (龍德造船) by the navy, Tsai said. The first Tuo Chiang-class vessel delivered was Ta Chiang (塔江)
EYE ON STRAIT: The US spending bill ‘doubles security cooperation funding for Taiwan,’ while also seeking to counter the influence of China US President Joe Biden on Saturday signed into law a US$1.2 trillion spending package that includes US$300 million in foreign military financing to Taiwan, as well as funding for Taipei-Washington cooperative projects. The US Congress early on Saturday overwhelmingly passed the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act 2024 to avoid a partial shutdown and fund the government through September for a fiscal year that began six months ago. Under the package, the Defense Appropriations Act would provide a US$27 billion increase from the previous fiscal year to fund “critical national defense efforts, including countering the PRC [People’s Republic of China],” according to a summary