TRADE-ACP: Speaking With One Voice on Trade Matters

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Wesley Gibbings

PORT OF SPAIN, Nov 29 1999 (IPS) - Leaders and senior officials of the 71-member African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group have agreed to launch a united campaign during the next few days of World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations in Seattle to ensure that the needs of poor and developing countries are recognised.

ACP head, Leonel Fernandez, President of the Dominican Republic, was among those suggesting that this grouping, in collaboration with its global allies, should pursue the adoption of some clear principles along lines suggested by an October meeting of ACP Trade Ministers.

He also urged the group’s powerful European Union (EU) partners to exercise their influence in helping the WTO uphold “a view of development to ensure special and differential treatment” for the under-developed and developing countries of the world.

The Santo Domingo Declaration, which emerged from two days of talks at the Second ACP Summit last week, argues that “trade liberalisation should be pursued progressively by giving adequate support to developing countries, in particular, the least developed, landlocked, small and vulnerable island states.”

“In this regard,” the Declaration says, “we urge that the Declaration to be adopted by the 3rd WTO Conference in Seattle should contain a clear and unequivocal reaffirmation of special and differential treatment as a fundamental principle of the multilateral trading system.”

The leaders fully endorsed the report of the ACP Trade Ministers who met in Brussels and which, in part, called for the introduction of a “standstill clause”, requiring WTO signatories “not to take any measures that would reduce the current market access opportunities of ACP countries, including preferential access with the European Union for a further period of 10 years”.

In that context, the ACP ministers had called for a decision “supporting the continuation of trade preferences as a means of facilitating the phased and smooth integration of ACP countries into the multilateral trading system through the application of a peace clause in respect of waivers to enable ACP States to benefit from trade preferences in the EU.”

The Vice President of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar, said in Santo Domingo last week that “while we (ACP member states) subscribe to the ideals and gains of free trade, developing countries need a level playing field to practise it.”

“Our development partners are no doubt aware of the consequences of a free trade regime between them and the highly disadvantaged ACP member countries,” he said

Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister, Basdeo Panday, who currently heads the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM) group, used the same language arguing that the “global economic playing field is grossly uneven.”

“It is uneven for developing countries,” he said. “We will not reap the benefits of liberalisation in a globalised economy unless these inequalities are first redressed.”

“The ACP has to look beyond its relations with Europe to the wider economic environment,” he added, “to review and repair and reform the rules and disciplines of the WTO to the rectification of the global financial architecture and to the installation of relations of a basic humanitarian ethic.”

Such a view would have prompted the ACP heads to emphasise the role of the United Nations Council for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in working with the WTO to “(strengthen) the institutional capacities of developing countries”.

And, in their Plan of Action, the ACP leaders mandated their Trade Ministers to “ensure that development is put at the heart of any future WTO trade negotiations and that priority is accorded to the implementation of existing agreements and undertakings made especially in respect to the least developed, landlocked, small and vulnerable island states”.

“We mandate ACP Ministers of Trade and the ACP Secretariat to facilitate the accession to WTO of the Group’s Members which have not yet done so, and to ensure that special attention is paid to the conditions of their accession and adherence,” the Plan of Action further states.

The grouping has taken to Seattle a much wider package of demands including a call for acceleration of the discussion on a WTO “Integrated Framework for Trade-related Technical Assistance for the LDCs”.

It also wants to see the extension of transitional periods of the TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights), TRIMS (Trade Related Investment Measures) , and Customs Valuation Agreements “for periods that take into account the availability of resources required to effectively implement these Agreements”.

The ACP also wants the WTO to address the concerns of developing countries, particularly the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Net Food Importing Developing Countries (NFIDCs) which would benefit from the incorporation of “concrete, operational and contractual measures, including provisions of institutional and human capacity building, technical and financial assistance, that are both effective and responsive to the special needs of LDCs and NFIDCs”.

The strategy hammered out by the Trade Ministers and endorsed by the ACP heads also called for the assurance that non-trade concerns relating to food security, rural activities and environmental protection “are fully taken into account in the future negotiations in agriculture”.

The grouping wants an examination of the TRIPS Agreement so as to identify ways and means to ensure that the goal of technology transfer is achieved and that there is a relationship between the Agreement and other instruments in pursuit of the protection and preservation of indigenous plants and fauna, knowledge of medicine, and local designs.

Such a review of the TRIPS Agreement, Trade Ministers urged last October, “should also ensure that developing countries are not prevented from imposing compulsory licensing for drugs listed as essential by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the interest of their supply at reasonable prices”.

ACP officials in Seattle can also be expected to lobby for WTO-activated financing mechanisms that provide for technical assistance from the regular budget of the WTO and other sources in favour of developing countries, in particular the LDCs.

There is also a proposal for “more effective coordination between the WTO, IMF, World Bank, other multilateral financial institutions, UNCTAD and bilateral development partners in addressing the problem of competitiveness and supply side constraints of ACP economies”.

Hundreds of Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) activists have already arrived in Seattle to protest proposed WTO actions in areas ranging from the environment to trade in agricultural produce.

One senior Caribbean trade official says while some of the protests may coincide with Third World concerns, “most of these people are really fighting for protectionism against some of our products from this part of the world. Their interests are not our interests.”

ACP leaders left the Dominican Republic Friday and Saturday satisfied they had been able to hammer out a position that could leverage favourable action at the crucial talks.