Trade and Development at the WTO Conference in Hong Kong: An Assessment from a Southern NGO

Abstract

The Sixth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) was held in Hong Kong on 13-18 December 2005. The talks were a third installment of the Doha of multilateral trade negotiations, launched in the Qatari capital in November 2001 and continued at Cancun, Mexico, in September 2003. This commentary offers a Southern civil society advocate's perspective on the Hong Kong proceedings. I write as the Uganda-based coordinator of the Southern and Eastern African Trade Information and Negotiations Institute (SEATINI), although the views that follow are personal. In a word, the Hong Kong Ministerial was a great disappointment from the perspective of trade and development concerns. The priorities of developing countries were brushed aside while the negotiations concentrated on the interests of the developed countries. Hong Kong clearly indicated that the Doha is not actually, as proclaimed, a Round. Rather, it is primarily a Market Access Round for developed countries to gain entry to the industrial and services sectors of developing countries. Advocates of developing country interests need to rethink their strategies vis-a-vis the WTO negotiations in recognition of this fact. The Doha Promise The Doha Development Agenda (DDA) was launched with high hopes that it would address the previously sidelined needs of developing countries. Southern members had been disillusioned by the outcomes of the Uruguay (1986-1994), which created the WTO. The new global trade regime had not fulfilled its promise of trade liberalization and growth in the interest of all member countries, North and South. Instead, the Uruguay Agreements were clearly imbalanced in favor of developed countries. Paradoxically, the countries most needing advantage from the WTO were those gaining least advantage. This unfairness was evident in multiple areas. For example, the Uruguay Agreements and the first WTO Ministerial Conferences (in Singapore in 1996, Geneva in 1998, and Seattle in 1999) did nothing to address the massive agriculture subsidies in the developed countries that lead to dumping on the markets of developing countries. The WTO in its first years also offered the South little assistance to promote the development of manufacturing and services sectors. On services, progress was especially lacking on Mode 4 concerning the movement of natural persons. Yet, while developing countries demanded that the WTO correct inequities within the Uruguay Agreements, governments of the developed countries pressed for further rapid liberalization. Since the Singapore ministerial, there has thus been an ongoing North-South struggle over the pace and scope of liberalization and hence the definition of the WTO agenda. The announcement of the Doha Development Agenda in 2001 was a belated and reluctant acceptance by the North to address development issues of the South. The Doha thereby offered hope of making the WTO an institution that would equitably benefit all members, and not just the powerful ones. After the collapse of the Cancun talks, the challenge facing the Hong Kong meeting was to turn the aspirations of the DDA into reality. Disappointment in Hong Kong However, the path to and the final outcome at Hong Kong have once more failed expectations. The resultant development package has yet again been insubstantial. The patience of development advocates in civil society has now really been tested to the limit. For one thing, Hong Kong again brought little gains in agriculture for developing and poor countries. Agriculture is the mainstay of more than 80 percent of the people in the South, especially in the least developed countries (LDCs). It provides the main source of employment for over 70 percent of the population, contributes more than 60 percent of export earnings, accounts for 43 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), and provides the bulk of raw materials for industrial production in the South. …