Since the debacle in Cancún last September, the WTO and its member countries have withdrawn to lick their wounds and rethink the way forward. Whilst agreement was reasonably close, a whole range of misunderstandings brought the proceedings to a close prematurely. In the months since then, work by WTO members nationally, regionally and in a range of formal and informal meetings has regained the ground lost.
Negotiations on the new (Singapore) issues have been at stalemate for some time. The EU adopted a rather ambiguous stance post-Cancún, insisting that all these issues must be negotiated together, possibly on different timescales, yet also seeming to agree that trade facilitation could be separated from the other topics. There is a fair degree of optimism, based on the recent informal meetings, that trade facilitation will be on the table in its own right when the negotiations resume.
SITPRO is active on a number of fronts to support this work towards an agreement on trade facilitation in the WTO that is acceptable to all. In order to ensure that a trade facilitation agreement is both manageable and beneficial for the key developing countries ('The Boksburg Group'), SITPRO is working with the Commonwealth Business Council to hold a number of Roundtables, which will be funded by the Department for International Development. These will build on the successful Roundtables during 2003 (see the articles in Issue 46 & Issue 47). SITPRO has also become one of the inaugural members of a new group known as the Trade Facilitation Alliance. This is primarily a business group aimed at promoting the simplification and harmonisation of regulations covering cross border trade. The initial priority of the alliance is to advance trade facilitation through multilateral, regional and bi-lateral negotiations with priority being to a WTO agreement. The aims of this group dovetail extremely well with those of SITPRO.
Although there is a fair degree of optimism related to the current unofficial progress in the WTO, a lot hinges on successfully dealing with the problem of agricultural subsidies. There is a General Council Meeting in July when it is hoped that the negotiations will have moved forward. If this does not happen then elections in the United States and the European Union and the election of a new Director General of the WTO are likely to put the process on hold well into 2005.
Return to SITPRO News: Issue 50, April/May 2004
