Empowering the poor? The successes and limitations of the Bali Package for the ldcs

Abstract

After over a decade of languishing in stalemate, the Doha Development Agenda – the first round of trade negotiations launched under the auspices of the World Trade Organization – finally achieved a breakthrough at the Bali ministerial in 2013. Given that the Doha mandate places development – and particularly the concerns of the Least Developed Countries (ldcs) – at the heart of its agenda, our paper focuses on what the Bali outcome means for the world’s poorest countries. As a first step we provide a brief background against which the Bali negotiations took place. In the second section we assess the achievements and limitations of the Bali outcome, focusing on the ldc-specific package and also commenting on other issues that affect the ldcs. In the third section we explain the reasons for some of the achievements at Bali, which include negotiating strategies used by the ldcs themselves. In the fourth and final section we identify a plan of action for the future.