Cape Town — As the World Trade Organisation (WTO) scrambles to save the Doha Round of international trade negotiations from collapsing, a WTO spokesperson told allAfrica today that African governments have been the most vocal in expressing their disappointment at the difficulties in reaching agreement.
WTO director-general Pascal Lamy summoned an urgent meeting of the organization’s trade negotiations committee in Geneva last Friday after talks between Brazil, the European Union, India and the United States – designed to clear the way for an agreement between all 150 member countries – but the meeting broke down on Thursday.
Lamy called for “urgent action to restore confidence” in the talks. He told the committee that the parties were much closer to an agreement than they had been last year, and warned them: “The world will now be watching very closely what each and every one of you will be doing.”
In emailed answers to questions on the implications for Africa of last week’s breakdown, WTO information director Keith M. Rockwell told allAfrica that a successful outcome to current negotiations “would mean steep reductions in the sort of agriculture subsidies which have depressed global commodity prices and made it difficult for African producers to earn their living off the land.
“A balanced and ambitious deal,” he added, “would also mean new opportunities to sell African goods in the global marketplace and… enhanced technical assistance and capacity building so that African exporters could take advantage of those opportunities.
“This explains why it is the African governments which have been most vocal in expressing their disappointment at the difficulties we have faced in bringing these negotiations to a conclusion."
Rockwell said the chairs of the agriculture and industrial goods negotiating groups would submit texts to WTO members in early July. “They will be central to the negotiations in the coming weeks….”
Lamy told the trade negotiations committee on Friday that although an agreement between Brazil, the European Union, India and the United States would have been “helpful” in paving the way to a fully-fledged deal, “helpful does not mean indispensable… This negotiation is not a negotiation among just four players, it is a collective endeavor among all the participants in the Round.”
