The Hindu Business Line : The draft discord

ARE PEOPLE ASSOCIATED with the World Trade Organisation talking at cross-purposes or have the definitions changed? The issue is `development', and there appears to be a basic disagreement on it going by the reaction of important member-countries to the first draft of the Hong Kong Ministerial declaration. The disconnect starts from the very second sentence of the draft which reads that the members "emphasise the central importance of the development dimension in every aspect of the Doha Work Programme and recommit ourselves to making it a meaningful reality, in terms both of the results of the negotiations on market access and rule-making and of the specific development-related issues" involved. But countries such as India insist that the draft is `development deficit'.

Clearly, both views cannot be correct if there is agreement on what the term `development' means. In fact, this specific point itself can be debated because while there is a considered, formal list of the less-developed countries for the purpose of the WTO's operations, there is no such enumeration of the `developing' nations. Taking advantage of this, the rich nations have tried to drive a wedge in the developing bloc by categorising some economies as `developing' and others as `advanced developing'. However, the basic disagreement among WTO members remains — that the draft does not reflect the spirit of the Doha Round, finalised in 2001 — Development.

The important point about the perceived shortcomings of the draft is that they are not limited to farm issues but extend to such subjects as non-agriculture market access, special and differential treatment of matters of interest to developing economies and LDCs, and TRIPs. The inference one can draw from this — India's stand at the recent meeting of the Trade Negotiations Committee in Geneva sets out the points comprehensively — is that little can be done now to get the mid-December Hong Kong Ministerial back on its feet because the differences are very basic and are not mere bargaining points for use by negotiators on both sides.

And, yet, in the very interest of the developing world, the Hong Kong meet cannot be allowed to fail as that could disrupt the process of trade liberalisation. The Commerce Minister, Mr Kamal Nath, while addressing the G-90 summit of the African-Caribbean-ACP (ACP) countries in Brussels earlier this week, said forcefully that "if the impact (of the ongoing negotiations) on development is adverse, (they) should be forthwith discarded and a positive, pro-development solution should be found." This is good but it would be quite pointless and wasteful to jettison all the work done till now in Geneva on the very issues of discord. This aspect the WTO Director-General, Mr Pascal Lamy, has been emphasising repeatedly in recent weeks, as it becomes increasingly clear that there will be no consensus on the Hong Kong declaration. In all likelihood there will be another `unscheduled' ministerial early next year to accomplish what Hong Kong may fail to. This is what Brazil, India and China also should work for if multilateral trade liberalisation is to continue to yield fruit.

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