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WTO July Package fails the poor
by edwin
Thursday, Aug. 05, 2004 at 12:50 PM
edwinlicaros@yahoo.com
The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) General Council reached an agreement on July 31 in Geneva on a number of controversial trade issues. The corporate media were quick to hail the ‘July Package of Framework Agreements’ as a breakthrough for the World Trade Organization's Doha Round of negotiations but NGOs monitoring the negotiations and some delegates of poor countries criticized the agreement for betraying the poor.
The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) General Council reached an agreement on July 31 in Geneva on a number of controversial trade issues. The corporate media were quick to hail the ‘July Package of Framework Agreements’ as a breakthrough for the World Trade Organization's Doha Round of negotiations that had been stalled after the failed ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico last year.
In Cancun, the poor countries were able to stand their ground knowing that no deal was better than a bad deal. During the negotiations in Geneva, they agreed to a deal in order to avert more harm and to stall the forceful moves of the EU and US to impose more disadvantageous deals upon them.
NGOs monitoring the negotiations and some delegates of poor countries criticized the agreement for betraying the poor and stressed that the rich countries were able to get what they wanted through bullying and intimidation of the delegations from the south.
Purportedly, the US and Europe promised to reduce their huge agricultural export subsidies but in reality the text is very vague and does not even impose a timeframe. The agreement actually only enhances the dumping of farm products which has already caused significant harm to poor farmers in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The poor countries, on the other hand, made concessions on trade in services, industrial tariff protection (or Non-Agricultural Market Access) and other issues. More importantly, the deal puts the so-called “development round” of trade negotiations back on track and might pave the way for more unfavorable trade agreements.
In the Philippines, activists already warned that the country's food sovereignty will be undermined further by the agreement. To add insult to injury, the Philippines' special treatment for rice, through quantitative restrictions on imports, will expire on June 30, 2005. The lifting of these restrictions will allow the unlimited entry of cheaper rice from WTO rice-exporting countries, to the detriment of poor Filipino rice farmers.
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