Will the Doha Development Agenda come back to the fore of world interest? Niveen Wahish investigates Almost four years after their last meeting in Hong Kong, World Trade Organisation (WTO) members are set to hold their seventh ministerial conference in Geneva, Switzerland, from 30 November to 2 December. The decision was announced last week during the WTO's General Council. Ministers will discuss under the theme "the WTO, the Multilateral Trading System and the Current Global Economic Environment". The conference, according to General Council Chairperson Mario Matus in his statement to the General Council, is a "regular" meeting to fulfil the condition that regular sessions be held. Matus stressed that "this conference is not intended to be a negotiating session -- the Doha Development Agenda [DDA] negotiations are on a separate track." But the DDA is bound to impose itself on the conference. The ministerial session will be an opportunity for WTO member countries to renew their commitment to the completion of the round, which has faced repeated postponements of its culminating session, change in the US administration, and more recently the global economic crisis. And WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy since the outbreak of the global financial crisis has stressed the importance of trade in resuscitating the ailing world economy. Most recently, during the General Council, Lamy, in his capacity as chair of the Trade Negotiations Committee, pointed out that "trade has become a casualty of this crisis," and that "world trade will contract by nine per cent this year, driven lower by the collapse in global demand and by shortages of trade finance that have created supply-side constraints to export growth, in particular in many developing countries." Lamy also told the General Council that it is important to keep opening trade and to "engage vigorously in tackling the few remaining challenges". Not all agree that the remaining challenges are "few". Ahmed Ghoneim, professor of economics at Cairo University dubbed Lamy's words as a "pep talk" to WTO members. Nonetheless, Ghoneim believes the time is opportune for resuming the DDA. "If there ever is a good time, this would be it." In his opinion, the global recession is persuading countries that enhancing trade to promote growth is important. Besides the global slowdown, a new US administration, Ghoneim says, and President Obama's determination to please everyone, gives some hope that the round may be concluded. Magda Shahin, director of the Trade-Related Assistance Centre affiliated to the American Chamber of Commerce in Cairo (AmCham), also agrees there is more optimism now regarding the Doha round. But she is not overly confident about the role of the new US administration. "The new administration and Congress are not pro free trade agreements," she said, adding that if they get back to the negotiating table they are bound to insist on the inclusion of environmental and labour standard issues that will not be accepted easily by other WTO members. "We are all for environment and labour standards and we want to give them priority in our plans and regulations, but we do not want to see them used as sticks against our exports or as imaginative protective measures." It remains to be seen how the issues of concern to the US will be accommodated. Shahin does not expect that any country will accept to reopen the agenda of Doha to include additional interests of the US. "We need to finish this round." Shahin suggests two parallel tracks of negotiations: one for the DDA and the other for environment and labour issues. "Whether these two tracks meet or not is very difficult to say now." Shahin does not believe the US is moving fast enough to get back to the negotiating table. "US Trade Representative Ron Kirk is still feeling his way around and familiarising himself with the various issues," she said. In addition, the US administration has not requested "fast track authority" from Congress. "Without fast track, there is no credibility to the negotiations," Shahin said. Fast track authority, also called trade promotion authority, is authority granted to the president to negotiate agreements that Congress can approve or disapprove but cannot modify. Once countries are back at the negotiating table they are obliged to continue negotiating issues that delayed the round's conclusion in the first place. These include agricultural liberalisation where the developing world is pressing for greater access to markets of the developed world and non-agricultural market access where the developing world is reluctant to make concessions. According to Shahin, the upcoming ministerial session is important in deciding how things will move forward. "At the moment, there is no clear guidance where we are heading." Nonetheless, she believes that negotiating the DDA is worth the effort being put into it and that developing countries will stand to benefit. "The leverage of developing countries as a group in the Doha round is much stronger than the leverage of developing countries negotiating bilateral or regional agreements." Furthermore, Shahin says that developing countries stand to benefit from the "aid for trade" mechanism where funds could be directed at assisting developing countries with their trade facilitation measures.
