*{The Doha Development Agenda: Ensuring Equitable Market Access [http://www.weforum.org/site/knowledgenavigator.nsf/Content/The%20Doha%20Development%20Agenda%3A%20Ensuring%20Equitable%20Market%20Access?open&topic_id=300250000&theme_id=300]

            06.06.2002

            Africa Economic Summit 2002}

            The Doha Ministerial Declaration committed to making the current round of WTO trade negotiations a "development round". The factors essential for success, including trade-offs and concessions by countries of the North and the South, were explored in a session moderated by Maria Ramos, Director-General, National Treasury of South Africa, and a Global Leader for Tomorrow 1998. Introducing the subject, she said the focus is on the potential of globalization to take the world population out of poverty and the debate is how to make this a reality. Ramos noted in particular the vast barriers to market entry from North to South and the fact that Africa is the only area in which poverty has increased in real terms over the last 20 years.

            She asked Alec Erwin, Minister of Trade and Industry of South Africa, and William Daley, President, SBC Communications, USA, a Co-Chair of the Africa Economic Summit 2002, to highlight the challenges at hand.

            Erwin said the Doha negotiations resulted in a major move towards eliminating trade-distorting measures for agriculture. They had also dealt with some specific problems of industrial tariffs. Nobody objects to rules on dumping, countervailing tariffs or subsidies, he said, but these can easily be used for protective purposes. "What are classified as subsidies are stacked against the developing countries and in favour of the developed," Erwin said.

            There were suggestions that the discussions should be extended to include issues such as competition law, environmental issues and labour standards. That would mean the world trade system is not dealing with trade issues but with the regulation of all markets except financial markets. Erwin said that while there is some logic in this, the reality is that developing countries do not have the capacity for negotiations on that scale.

            Erwin added that these agreements are a package regarded as the development round, and the challenge now is to implement them. However, the United States Farm Bill, providing for subsidies for US farmers, not only means the US can no longer provide a balance to the position of European farmers, as it did at Doha, but it also raises serious questions about the credibility of the negotiating process.

            "If we reopen the issue of whether you can support your agriculture if you have the money, it reopens the issue of whether you can support anything you like because you have the money. That is a very dangerous road," Erwin said.

            Daley said the developed world has to do more to build public support for trade. No politician in these countries risks losing anything - except possibly political credibility - by opposing trade issues. "There is no political downside, and we need to create that downside," he said. He raised the question of whether the Doha round could disappoint because of expectations on the timescale within which agreement could be reached. "The last round lasted for 25 years. There needs to be a bit more realism," Daley said.

            On the question of what trade-offs would be needed, Daley said the NEPAD itself would be a form of trade-off, "if it is a true commitment and begins to convince the North that there is a change in the South on those issues that the North cares about."

            In the highlighting of points raised at group discussions, Hamid Temmar, Minister of Commerce of Algeria, said that for Doha to be regarded as a true development round, the North has to accept the need to help the South develop through investment and not only through trade. "We have to transform our economies so that these investments are safe and efficient." Developing countries also have to stand together in the fight for access to developed markets. They had done so at Doha, with the result that their issues were discussed seriously and significant results achieved.

            Cedric Savage, Chairman, The Tongaat-Hulett Group, South Africa, stressed the need to build the capacity of the team negotiating complex trade issues affecting different areas of the economy. "We must put our best possible team into the arena," he said. "We need top quality people from the public and private sectors." Savage also suggested a NEPAD negotiating team, representing poorer African countries that lack the capacity for trade negotiations.
                    *{Contributors:       Biwott Nicholas K.
                  Daley William M.
                  Daun Claas E.
                  Erwin Alec
                  Hall Edmund A.
                  Kpakol Magnus
                  Luüs Christo
                  MacDonald Guy
                  Motsepe Patrice T.
                  Osakwe Chiedu I.
                  Ramos Maria
                  Savage Cedric M. L.
                  Temmar Hamid}