Date: 19 September 2007
Time: 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Venue: Stephen Fuller Hall, Asian Institute of Management
The Doha Development Agenda (DDA) and Aid for Trade-Efforts
to Develop Fairer Rules for Developing Countries
Press Release
“Our objective is to establish a more level playing field, provide developing countries with better conditions, and enable them to reap the benefits of opening trade.”
This was the gist of the talk given by Pascal Lamy, director general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), during a lecture sponsored by the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) last week. The talk was part of the Globalization Lecture Series (GLS), a regular program of the AIM Policy Center, in cooperation with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation that serves as a venue for discussion among international and local experts, government leaders and policy makers on global issues.
The head of the world’s most powerful trade body discussed before AIM professors, students, and guests the current state of trade negotiations among its 139 member nations.
He said that the WTO is committed “to ensure that the benefits of globalization are more widely and fairly shared by more people especially those from developing countries.” The negotiations, he said, are now centered on “correcting the remaining imbalances in trade rules.”
Lamy admitted that “globalization also has its negatives, its darker side.” According to him, “the benefits of globalization do not seem to reach all people and this is the reason why this globalization, which is seen by many, rightly so, as a positive, is also seen by some as unfair.” He believes “one of the most important challenges of our generation and your generation is to ensure that the benefits of globalization are more widely shared and more fairly shared, and in particular that they reach more people in developing countries.”
The outspoken director-general said these disadvantages are far outweighed by the benefits of having an international trading to serve as an arbiter for trade disputes among countries. “We offer a forum where all the actors are equal, because we take decisions by consensus, and we offer a system for monitoring the commitments which our members take vis-à-vis each other, and on top of that, specific dispute settlement,” he said.
Among other issues, this new round of trade negotiations seeks to address tariff peaks, high tariff and the tariff escalations remaining in developed countries, which were usually applied on productions where developing countries had a comparative advantage such as textile or footwear. In agriculture, agreements were already made to deliver effective guards in trade-distorting agricultural subsidies in developed countries.
At the same time, developing countries will also have acquired the right to protect a number of specific sensitivities, notably in agriculture, in what the WTO calls special products in the criteria of food security, in livelihood security and the whole development. An example where this can be used is to protect farming economies of developing countries from damaging import surges.
The lecture, which was attended by MBA, MM, and MDM students from various Asian countries, is part of AIM’s continuing effort to train and form business leaders in Asia.
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