Trade Liberalization, Agriculture and Poverty in Low-Income Countries

Abstract

At the Fourth Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Doha in November 2001, members agreed to launch the next comprehensive round of multilateral trade negotiations (MTNs). The attempt to do so at the previous Ministerial Meeting in Seattle in late 1999 was aborted, not least because developing-country members believed they had not benefited sufficiently from the preceding Uruguay Round. That belief still persists, and the poorer developing countries of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in particular remain sceptical that a new round of negotiations will benefit them — notwithstanding the substantial focus on their development concerns in the Doha Ministerial Declaration (WTO, 2001b).