Daily Independent Online.
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Wednesday, August 11, 2004.
WTO: New dawn for world trade
The dying hours of July will go down in
history as an uncommon moment for the global community as countries of the industrialised
North and their counterparts of the developing South overcame age-old
differences in trade policies and set for themselves an agenda for effectuation
of a workable and productive regime of trade liberalisation. At the July 30/31
meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, the World Trade Organisation WTO received
unprecedented support from the United States (U.S.), Europe and Australia for
the elimination of farm export subsidies, a 20-per cent reduction in domestic
farm support, and substantial cuts in protective tariffs.
The breakthrough and its promise for the future were
unmistakable, as key figures addressed the world press moments after the
conclusion of deliberations. “We have agreed to make historic reforms in
global agricultural trade,” declared the U.S. Trade Representative,
Robert Zoellick, in a categorical affirmation of the new, propitious direction
that Washington has resolved to follow. Brazil’s Foreign Minister Celso
Amorim described the development as “the beginning of the end of
subsidies,” adding, “support given to farm exports will disappear
first, but the process leading to the disappearance of domestic support has
also started.”
As underscored in remarks by WTO’s
Director-General, Supachai, a momentum has clearly been set for an overall
framework for the Doha round, meaning that the ultimate success of the global
trade talks hinges on a consensus among WTO’s 147 member countries. That
consensus, easily more attainable now than at any other point in the history of
the WTO, would be facilitated by tactful handling of outstanding issues such as
products for exemption from the contentious steep tariffs and the U.S.
tradition of counter-cyclical farm payments to farmers during seasons of low
prices for produce.
For Third World countries truly engaged in global
trade, the outcome of the Geneva meeting should serve as a welcome fillip to
productive activity in agriculture and industry generally. Their farmers and
investors should find a significantly improved international market for their
produce and products, as artificial barriers like protective tariffs are scaled
down and domestic support programmes cease to confer unfair advantage on
competitors from the industrialised world. It is known that the U.S. alone
votes as much as $33 billion for farm subsidies in a single year. Between the
U.S. and the European Union, allocations to such sectoral needs are sometimes
in the range of a $100 billion in a single year. Such domestic support
programmes, totally lacking in most Third World countries, created an uneven
playing field in global trade, with producers from the poor countries severely
disadvantaged.
The case of Nigeria has been particularly pathetic.
The country has been part of WTO negotiations and trade arrangements since
1994, observing regulations on trade liberalisation as faithfully as any other
respectable member of the international community, but without any significant
participation in global trade. We are aware that the Nigeria Labour Congress
(NLC), Cross River Governor Donald Duke and some other well-meaning Nigerians
have found sufficient reason to demand Nigeria’s withdrawal from the WTO,
given the fact that the country has virtually nothing by way of agricultural
produce or manufactured goods to sell to the outside world. The country has
over the years been a dumping ground for all manner of goods from other parts
of the world. As much as we continue to support Nigeria’s membership of
the WTO, we join these well-meaning citizens to emphasise the pressing need to
rev up the productive capacity of the real sector, including agriculture, for
meaningful integration in the global economy.
To the industrialised North that has yielded
unconditionally to the demands for trade reforms, commendation is due,
essentially for demonstrating the virtue of principled compromise and for its
inclination to extend material prosperity to less developed countries. In the
anticipated trade pact is a guarantee that farmers and others in the developing
world idled by the unfavourable conditions that have existed to date would be
energised toward revenue-generating productive activities. It is our dream that
Nigeria, too, would find enough challenge in the new development and strategise
for a reversal of the near-prostate state of agriculture and industry.
