India likely to lodge its protest over draft text on agriculture — WTO

Liberia on Wednesday was officially accepted as a member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Roberto Azevedo, the current Director-General of the World Trade Organization, told Anadolu Agency that the WTO family is glad to be welcoming an African country to the organization during a Ministerial conference which is being held on African soil for the first time. However, experts are a little apprehensive about the positive outcome from this meeting as the rich nations are keen to abandon old issues and negotiate new matters such as government procurement and investments. You can’t expect solutions from a system that breeds the world’s problems, ‘ the activists said yesterday.

“The draft text is a huge disappointment for developing countries and those who came here hoping for progress on key agricultural issues, especially on public stockholding for food security purposes and SSM for import surges”.

In a letter to the two officials, the groups noted longstanding differences on market access and domestic support among the participating countries in the talks, which are officially part of the Doha round of WTO negotiations that began back in 2001. The G7, without exception, will continue to subsidize their farmers and agricultural systems.

The Nairobi conference is expected to attract more than 5,000 delegates from 163 WTO member states.

Kazakhstan’s path to membership in the World Trade Organization, which took 20 years, “wasn’t easy”, but the country took the necessary steps to open its markets and liberalize its economy, the minister said.

The European Union and some other countries, including Brazil, are seeking a deal on export competition during the ongoing WTO’s Ministerial meeting here. However, the agreement was never expanded, despite substantial technological advances.

This year, Taiwan will donate US$80,000 to the Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF), as it did last year, to help strengthen developing nations’ ability to conduct food safety checks and take quarantine measures for animals and plants, MOFA said.

“We will need to either fix it, agree on a new way of negotiating, or agree to remove it so the WTO focuses on dispute settlement, on trade policy review and the other areas that do not have a negotiated element in them”, she said.

“This round promised that issues of particular concern to developing countries, including small and vulnerable economies and least developed countries, would be at the heart of our work and decisions”.

There is also the possibility of a deal to improve export opportunities for the poorest nations, the least developed countries.

Earlier, Kenya’s Tourism Cabinet Secretary Najib Balala said he anticipated the event to inject about Sh2.

The biannual WTO ministerial conference from Tuesday to Friday is the first such meeting on African soil in two decades.

Speaking at the opening session of the WTO meeting, Kenya President Uhuru Kenyatta emphasised on the importance of the issues of the Doha Round. The outcome of the conference will be dubbed the “Nairobi Declaration”.