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TRADE: Commonwealth Begins New WTO Campaign

By Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Feb 7 2004 (IPS) - Four ministers from Commonwealth countries are undertaking a new campaign from next week to advance WTO talks.

The ministers will visit Geneva, Washington, Tokyo and Brussels from Monday “to drive home the concerns of developing countries on trade issues,” the Commonwealth said in a statement here.

The mission is in line with a strong initiative taken by Commonwealth secretary-general Don McKinnon to give the group of 53 nations an influential voice in the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Trade issues became a dominant theme at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (CHOGM) in Abuja early December last year. McKinnon held up the Commonwealth, a group of nations including Britain and others once a part of the British empire, as a microcosm for the world that could work together.

Commonwealth members include the developed nations Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, other strong developing nations such as South Africa, Malaysia and India, and also some of the poorest countries including small island states in the Caribbean and the Pacific.

The team of ministers now on a mission for the group comprises Alhaji Idris Waziri, commerce minister of Nigeria, Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury, commerce minister of Bangladesh and also chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group, Billie Miller, trade minister from Barbados who represents the Caribbean region on the Doha Round, and Kalipate Tavola, foreign and trade minister of Fiji Islands.

“The mission follows a decision made by Commonwealth heads of government at their meeting in Abuja in December at which they reaffirmed their commitment to a transparent, rules-based multilateral trading system and regretted the breakdown of the trade talks held in Cancún,” McKinnon said in a statement in London.

The ministers are expected to urge major global players on trade to “negotiate positively and flexibly to reinvigorate the Doha Round of trade talks and to move expeditiously towards a final agreement,” the Commonwealth statement said.

The team will meet WTO director-general Supachai Panitchpakdi in Geneva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Horst Koehler, Senator Chuck Hagel, chair of the Senate sub-committee on trade and senior U.S. and World Bank officials in Washington, European Union trade commissioner Pascal Lamy in Brussels and senior government officials in Tokyo.

But while the team represents a cross-section of the developing world, and it will meet influential leaders in the WTO process, it is not clear how seriously the Commonwealth is taken by other multilateral agencies.

A senior Commonwealth official attending the heads of government meeting acknowledged a “gap between the Commonwealth’s aims and its results so far” while claiming also that the gap was being narrowed.

The fundamental fault-line within the organisation is that when WTO negotiations really matter, then Britain for instance carries weight as an EU (European Union) member rather than as a member of the Commonwealth. Other members campaign more seriously in regional economic groupings than as Commonwealth members.

Nor have the developed countries among the Commonwealth made any significant trade arrangements with the developing members of the Commonwealth. As a fairly substantial microcosm of the world, the Commonwealth has not been particularly effective either in trade or political matters.

The Commonwealth does nevertheless provide another platform to give developing countries a voice before other multilateral organisations. Many of the smaller countries within the Commonwealth – and it includes many with a population of something like a million down to a few thousand – are given a voice through the Commonwealth that might otherwise never be heard.

Commonwealth leaders issued a statement on multilateral trade in Abuja that took note of the great difficulties that small countries find themselves in.

“We recognise the special difficulties of developing economies, particularly of vulnerable small states that have lost trade preferences, and call for concerted action to assist them diversify their economies,” they said in a statement from their retreat at Aso Rock near Abuja.

The statement said that “we also recognise that poor and vulnerable countries should undertake trade liberalisation in ways that minimise transition costs and any negative impact on the poor.”

Few leaders and officials now expect the Commonwealth to introduce its own trade regime among member states. They are looking instead to some success by the Commonwealth s a lobbying group.