Ginebra, Suiza, 25 de septiembre del 2012.-
Los problrmas económicos mundiales, entre ellos el nivel de desempleo sin
precedentes en muchas regiones, indican que el multilateralismo está en crisis
y que la OMC requiere una reforma que le permita ayudar mejor a trabajadores,
agricultores, empresas y jóvenes. Ésta ha sido la conclusión de un panel de
alto nivel moderado por el Director General Pascal Lamy el segundo día del Foro
Público 2012.
Speakers are members of the Director-General’s Panel
on Defining the Future of World Trade.
Director-General Lamy opened the discussion by asking
two questions: Is multilateralism in crisis? And if it is, how is that
affecting your work and objectives?
Ms Sharan Burrow, Secretary-General of the
International Trade Union Confederation, said that there was no doubt that
multilateralism is in crisis, as shown by current economic indicators,
including record unemployment and the falling
income share of working people. She pointed to growing despair among workers
and surveys indicating that two-thirds of the people believe their children
will be worse-off in the future. She said capitalism is not working, and that
trade and economic institutions must be reformed.
Former President of Botswana Festus Gontebanye Mogae
said that while African countries have been experiencing the crisis for a long
time, they are not glad that big nations are finally experiencing it. He said
that 40 to 60 per cent of African youth remain unemployed. He said big
countries are withdrawing from multilateralism and engaging in bilateral trade
deals where they can gain more concessions over smaller countries. This is the
reason, he said, why African countries prefer the multilateral approach where the
rules apply equally for everybody.
Mr Frederico Fleury Curado, President and CEO of
Embraer S.A, Brazil, said that multilateralism has been important for Latin
America’s recent economic growth. He said the proliferation of regional trade
agreements is a threat to private industry and urged a conclusion to the Doha
Round, even if it does not cover the entire package. He said businesses need
multilateral institutions to ensure a level playing field.
Mr George Yeo, former Foreign Minister of Singapore
and Vice Chairman of Kerry Group Limited, said that people do not really want a
global government, which can create even bigger problems. He said people also
want big powers to lead but not to dominate. He commended the WTO for helping
move economic policies in the right direction.
Mr Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, Chairman and founder of Talal
Abu-Ghazaleh Overseas Corporation, Jordan, said the WTO rules go back some 50
years ago but the world has changed since then. He called for revisiting the
function of the WTO as a negotiating forum, including finding an alternative to
decision-making by consensus. More attention should be given to making the WTO
a knowledge organization like the World Bank, and to enable direct
participation of the private sector. Finally, he urged making accession into
the WTO less difficult, noting that half of the Arab world was still outside
the organization.
Mr Fujimori Yoshiaki, President and CEO of JS Group
Corporation, Tokyo, said that private industry has been working in an
environment of protectionism for a long time. Businesses have to adapt to the
exchange rate issue, the rise of RTAs, new non-tariff measures, and various
national laws and regulations. He said that the WTO must have a mechanism that
would allow participation of private industry in its work.
Mr Pradeep Singh Mehta, Secretary-General of CUTS
International, India, said that multilateralism has to deal with issues other
than trade that cross borders, like climate change, energy issues and security
concerns. He said that the Doha Round is at an impasse because of differing
levels of ambition, and this is sending very negative signals. Finally, he said
that despite all these factors, multilateralism is still the way to go.
The questions from the floor included one that asked
if poor countries should wait for multilateral solutions that would be a long
time coming, or go for bilateral agreements instead. A member of civil society
urged changing WTO rules to promote employment.
Mr Festus Gontebanye Mogae said that bilateral
agreements are not the answer, and that multilateral agreements are better,
especially for small countries with little bargaining power.
Ms Sharan Burrow urged changing trade rules to allow
policy space for governments to help people and sectors in need of help. She emphasized
that labour must have a voice in the WTO.
Mr Pradeep Singh Mehta said that the WTO has to take
on board the concerns of farmers and workers.
Mr Talal Abu-Ghazaleh said that the WTO should develop
a mechanism that would directly involve traders, businesses, workers and
consumers in its work.
Mr Fujimori Yoshiaki said that from his experience,
companies thrive if they contribute directly to the welfare of communities.
Thus, multilateral institutions should always be cognisant of providing
benefits on the ground.
Director-General Lamy welcomed the discussions as
interesting and useful, noting that there can be no easy solutions. He urged
participants to send comments and suggestions to panellists through a special
facility on the WTO website.
Sesión 14: Labour Rights: Value Chains, Labour Rights
and Development
The session discussed the various implications of
global value chains (GVCs) on labour rights, wages and development. Some
panellists shared the view that trade does not have direct implications on
labour conditions. Others argued that labour standards should be brought into
trade agreements. The panellists shared the view that GVCs are not a novelty,
but their expansion has created new trade flows that were not predicted by
traditional trade statistics. What is new is that, in terms of development,
trade has lifted millions of people out of poverty.
Mr Hubert Escaith, Chief Statistician of the WTO,
explained the concept of global value chains and how trade is measured in value
added. He highlighted that progress in technology led to global outsourcing. In
GVCs, it is difficult to measure “who produced what”. GVCs’ impact on jobs is
that high-skilled workers have increased.
Mr Douglas Lippoldt, Senior Economist and Trade Policy
Analyst at the OECD, argued that as an impact of the GVCs, the industrial
perspective and comparative advantage have changed. Tasks that go into the
production of a finished product — for example, services — are increasing,
leading to increased specialization. GVC expansion has made things less
predictable, demanding policy responses. These responses include open markets,
avoiding protectionism and simplifying ways of doing business.
Ms Jenny Holdcroft, Policy Director of IndustriALL
Global Union, highlighted that 90% of workers in Export Processing Zones are
women. Employment conditions are not optimal and not stable. She emphasized
that there should be a transfer of economic upgrading into social upgrading and
that the benefits of global trade be passed on to workers. She concluded by
stressing the need for integrated industrial policies that encourage freedom of
association and collective bargaining to enable workers to be more involved.
Ms Emily Sims, Senior Specialist at the ILO,
underscored the importance of helping governments in the enforcement of labour
rights protection and legislation. Complaints mechanisms should be put in place
and labour standards should be embedded into trade agreements. Businesses need
to discuss with each other a culture of rule of law and employees’ protection.
She concluded by saying that workers should be treated as a critical component
of an effective trade regime.
Mr Anthony Miller, of UNCTAD, presented a study on
corporate social responsibility. He argued that countries have the responsibility
of legal compliance with human rights and labour practices and standards. The
study recommended that hard laws should be implemented and become more
regulatory rather than voluntary. There is a need to raise the capacity of
governments in issues of labour, human rights and environmental practices.
International investment agreements are also a promising area where labour
issues should be addressed and incorporated.
Sesión 15: New Models for Trade and Development in the
21st Century: An Opportunity-Driven Approach to Building African Regional
Markets and Increasing Trade and Food Security
This session focused on the challenges facing the
African agricultural sector, and the implications for trade in agricultural
products. The panel provided a largely economic analysis, which was illuminated
by anecdotes and real examples of how such impediments affect different
economic actors across the continent.
The panel identified different obstacles to the
development of a healthy agricultural industry in Africa. All speakers
identified barriers to trade — be they regulatory barriers or impediments
created by poor infrastructure — as significantly affecting the growth of the
industry.
The panel also highlighted that responses to food
crises — such as, for example, export restrictions — may have deleterious
effects to which poor farmers in Africa are particularly vulnerable.
The panel questioned the extent to which regional
trade agreements are genuinely assisting the development of the industry,
concluding that they may not be affecting domestic farmers and entrepreneurs in
the manner envisaged by the drafters.
While there was support for liberalization of, and
growth in, agricultural trade through the multilateral system, one of the main
conclusions of the panel was that empirical research, informed by the
experiences of farmers, investors and other private actors, should form the
basis of identification and analysis of impediments to the development of the
industry. Such empirical research could help remedy what Ms Katrin Kuhlmann,
moderator of the session and President of TransFarm Africa, described as the
“missing middle”; that is, the lack of local entrepreneurialism and investment
required to develop a functioning agricultural sector in Africa.
Sesión 16: Gridlock: Why Global Cooperation is Failing
When it’s Most Needed
The session’s three principal questions were: Why is
global cooperation failing? Why is it failing now? And what are the possible
solutions? The session was framed by a forthcoming book by Mr Thomas Hale, Mr
David Held and Mr Kevin Young.
Mr Hale, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Oxford
University, launched the discussion, describing the transformation of the
global environment since 1960. The necessity for the creation of a liberal,
stable economy after World War II put the world on a new trajectory; however,
the process has now reached an intensity that impedes its own development. The
major global players have changed; institutions tend towards institutional
inertia; there is an expanding range of problems; and there is fragmentation in
many areas of global governance. Three possible solutions are institutional
innovation, new leadership and systemic shock.
From the viewpoint of international environmental
negotiation, for Mr Mark Halle, Vice President of the International Institute
for Sustainable Development, problems are more easily solved at a regional
level, when there is a common problem and a number of different stakeholders at
the negotiating table. Difficulties arise when problems are tackled at the
global level, governments are expected to solve the problems alone, economic
restructuring is required, and the solution requires a shift in the equity
balance between richer and poorer countries.
For Mr Thorsten Benner, Associate Director of the Global
Public Policy Institute, from the perspective of global security,
multilateralism has had both successes and failures. Major systemic war has
successfully been avoided in the last seven decades, and we have not therefore
needed to rethink our institutions, a factor in the current gridlock. Building
regional global security communities could be the best second-best solution.
Ms Caroline Deere Birkbeck, Senior Researcher at
Oxford University, spoke from the context of international trade negotiations
and negotiations in intellectual property. She argued that gridlock is not
always a problem, but may merely be a manifestation of multilateralism, when
all parties do not agree. Deals must be fair, sustainable, timely and
implementable. Often a major cause of gridlock is that the parties involved do
not agree on what the problem is, and that time is required for impact
assessment.
Sesión 17: A Menu for Renewed WTO Relevance: Natural
Resources and Preferential Trade Agreements
The session revolved around the relationship between
the WTO system and preferential trade agreements (PTAs). The panel shared the
view that there is a boom in PTAs in the last decades, especially after the
rise of emerging economies, such as the Asian countries, particularly India and
China, and the BRICS. The main question of the session was how does the WTO
system deal with these agreements? Or what is the capacity-building needed by
the WTO system to deal with these changes in the economic powers?
The panellists agreed that the WTO has to find or
create a new system which can achieve coherence between the old rules of the
WTO and the PTAs because up to now the WTO system has not been involved in
these agreements.
The session was divided into two parts, the first hour
was for the speakers' interventions and the second was for questions and
comments from the audience.
Mr Pablo Heidrich, senior researcher at NSI and the
moderator of the panel, started the
session by asking what contributions can the WTO provide to PTAs?
Ms Sandra Polonia Rios, Director of Centro de Estudos
de Integracào e Desenvolvimento (CINDES), sees that the problem of
multilateralism as shown in the Doha Round impasse is just a symptom of other
problems. The great recession, the deep changes in the global economy and in the
balance of power and the surge in the international prices of
resource-intensive commodities during the last decade reveal two important
questions: 1) how to guarantee access to essential and scarce resources? and 2) how to better distribute the extra rents
resulting from this context? Concerning natural resources and security
concerns, WTO rules have been designed to deal with import restrictions and ban
quantitative restrictions but do not discipline export duties. All these
factors reduce the capacity to define a common agenda for international trade
and consequently reduce the role of the WTO.
Professor Debra Steger, Senior Fellow of the Centre for international Governance
Innovation (CIGI) and Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, stated
that it is not clear what the mandate of the WTO is: is it trade or development? This is the main
problem facing the conclusion of the Doha Round. This is also the reason why
the WTO cannot move to new issues e.g. the financial crisis, climate change, etc.
Since 2011, a lot of not only PTAs have been notified to the WTO but also
bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and plurilateral agreements, which are
discussed outside the WTO. The WTO has to find an institutional way to deal
with PTAs in terms of Article XXIV of the GATT. This institutional mechanism
could be assumed as follows: 1) As some of the PTAs go further than WTO rules
(e.g. competition rules, environmental issues…etc.), a working party or a
committee allowing the members to discuss these new issues or PTAs is a must.
2) Article 24 of the GATT recognizes PTAs so the dispute settlement mechanism
should have jurisdiction over these PTAs. The WTO and PTAs are part of the
broader multilateral system.
Mr Eduardo Bianchi, Co-chair of FLASCO-WTO Chair and former Secretary of
Industry of Argentina, said that the increase in prices of natural resources
will continue after the emergence of Asian countries and especially China.
There has to be a new agenda for the WTO for dealing with the impact of China and
India's emergence. There is a demand for more complex rules at the multilateral
level, linking PTAs, regional trade agreements (RTAs) and the WTO system. There
should be a WTO+ where new areas are discussed and implemented, such as capital
movement, competition rules. etc.
Mr Rolf Traeger, Economic Affairs Officer at UNCTAD,
started his presentation by asking about the consequences of the South's
emergence in natural resources, particularly least developed countries (LDCs)
and low-income countries? What is the attitude of LDCs vis à vis bilateral
relations? In one sense, they are happy. It means a new market for these
countries but at the same time, they face a huge challenge because of the
asymmetry between the economies of the parties. LDCs will not be developed by
an increase in its raw materials prices as there are a lot of other issues on
the technological side which also have to be considered. That is why the WTO
will maintain a very important role for the development of LDCs.
During the Q&A with the audience, it was asked
whether the WTO should intervene or have the capacity to intervene in
scientific issues. A representative from the University of Colombia commented
that China exploits the lack of rules in the WTO by concluding these
agreements.
Fuente: OMC