Bruselas, Bélgica, 24 de octubre del 2012.- En la reunión de Ministros de Comercio de los
países ACP celebrada en Bruselas el 24 de octubre de 2012, el Director General,
Pascal Lamy, dijo que el Grupo de Miembros de África, del Caribe y del Pacífico
(ACP) “es uno de los grupos más enérgicos e influyentes en la defensa de sus
intereses y en las negociaciones en la OMC”. Instó al Grupo ACP a participar
activamente en cinco frentes comerciales: facilitación del comercio,
integración regional, Ayuda para el Comercio, cadenas de valor mundiales y
medidas no arancelarias. El Director General dijo lo siguiente:
“Concretar el papel del
Grupo ACP en las negociaciones comerciales internacionales”
Secretary-General
Chambas,
Honourable
Ministers of Trade of the ACP,
Ambassadors,
Ladies and
Gentlemen,
I welcome
this opportunity to address you this afternoon on the occasion of the opening
session of the ACP Ministers of Trade Meeting. The group of African, Caribbean
and Pacific (ACP) members is one of the more powerful and influential advocacy
and negotiating arms in the WTO. With your geographical reach and contributions
of your membership, the ACP continues to play an instrumental role in moving
forward the debate in Geneva. You have always been characterized by your
ability to bridge your differences and coalesce around shared priorities and
strategic positions.
I would
like to briefly outline some elements of the current trade context and discuss
with you how I see the ACP role in advancing a pro-ACP trade agenda.
First, the
forecast for the global economy remains sobering. The WTO recently revised
downward the projections for trade volume growth in 2012 to 2.5 per cent, down
from 3.7 per cent in spring. The IMF revised its forecast for global growth to
3.3 per cent this year and the ILO has forecast that in 2013 an additional 7
million people will join the 200-million-strong ranks of the unemployed.
Second, we
have the crisis in the euro zone, the risks from the US ’fiscal cliff’ and the
slowdown in the emerging economies. The bright spark in all of this is that
developing countries, such as the ACP, are refining their priorities and seeing
non-traditional markets and trade within their own regions as important
complements to their traditional export markets.
Third, we
have a volatility in the food markets with prices spiking again, even if not at
the level seen in 2008.
Let me now
turn to the negotiations under the Doha Development Agenda. At the WTO
Ministerial last December there was consensus that there is no prospect for
concluding the entire agenda in the short term. But there was also consensus to
try and reach deliverables in the shorter term.
We
witnessed a first deliverable with the adoption of the guidelines to simplify
the accessions of least-developed countries (LDCs) to the WTO earlier this
year.
The
question before you today is what are the issues that can be delivered in the
shorter term of practical importance to the ACP? And as your economies become
more multi-faceted and multi-tiered, you are also casting your net wider. A
larger spectrum of issues requires your attention.
A second
question before you today is therefore also what are longer-term trade issues
which the ACP should care about?
I will
focus my short intervention on five key areas. None of them are ’new’. All of
them are already on the ACP radar. But maybe what necessitates a new approach
to them is their inter-relatedness. If there is one lesson that we have learned
from the economic crisis of 2008 and the slow recovery which continues to
today, it is our inter-connectedness and the impact that policies in one corner
of the globe can have on another part.
I will
start with the most immediate issue requiring your attention. I say immediate
because there is potential for short-term deliverable which fits with the ACP’s
own regional agenda. This is the area of trade facilitation. As you well know,
trade facilitation is essentially about making trade, both imports and exports,
easier and less costly. It is about increasing customs productivity, improving
tax collection at the border, limiting the scope for corruption and becoming
more attractive to foreign direct investment. One only has to look at the
annual World Bank “Doing Business Report” to see that those countries which
have advanced up the list are those which have invested in effective trade
facilitation and border procedures. A WTO agreement on trade facilitation would
improve the transparency and predictability of trade and of doing business and
is an excellent insurance policy for locking in domestic reforms which most of
you are already undertaking for your own country or for regional purposes.
The figures
speak for themselves: the cost of moving trade today worldwide is roughly 10
per cent of the value of trade. A WTO trade facilitation agreement could bring
this down to 5 per cent, hence the economic impact of streamlining red tape and
standardization. The negotiations are an important opportunity for developing
countries, especially LDCs and landlocked developing countries (LLDCs), to
upgrade their architecture for doing trade.
The novelty
of the WTO deal on trade facilitation is that for the first time a WTO
agreement recognizes the explicit link between adopting WTO commitments and
technical assistance needed to implement them. This is a huge step forward in
the traditional construct of WTO agreements. And one that can have an important
role to play in the future. So my advice as a friend to you is to be active
participants in this negotiation and to frame the technical assistance versus
commitment link in clear and tangible terms. In December 2013, we will hold the
9th WTO Ministerial Conference in Indonesia. The Indonesian authorities are
obviously looking forward to ensuring deliverables to be presented at their
ministerial. But we all know that given the technical complexity of a trade
facilitation agreement, this will not happen at the last minute. Getting there
by the summer break next year should, in my view, be a reasonable target.
Trade
facilitation, which is an essential element for cross-border integration,
brings me to my second point, which is regional integration. The ACP has been
built on the recognition that economies of scale and greater integration of
small economies is a necessary policy for growth and development. There are
degrees of integration within the ACP regions but I believe we can all agree
that more effort needs to be exerted to make your regions truly integrated.
The recent
African Union decision on boosting intra-African trade and the attention given
to this theme at the African Union meetings of Heads of State and Ministers of
Trade is therefore a welcome move in that direction, as is the focus given to
the link between regional integration, agriculture productivity and food
security at the upcoming AU Trade and Agriculture Ministers meeting in Addis
next week. The efforts in the Caribbean and in the Pacific to develop regional
Aid for Trade strategies which seek to focus on regional integration is also a
testament to the centrality given to regional integration. We are ready to
support you in these endeavours.
My third
point is Aid for Trade. In 2010, resources for Aid for Trade reached their
highest level at US$ 45 billion — the majority of this flowing to LDCs and
low-income countries (LICs). There has been a renewed emphasis on showing
impacts and results — especially important in a budget-strained environment. We
expect commitments in the future to remain flat. This means using the
assistance to leverage other forms of finance — and the Enhanced Integrated
Framework continues to successfully play this role for LDCs. Aid for Trade is
an essential component to your trade policies in that it allows you to build
capacity and develop your trade-related infrastructures. Next July we will hold
the fourth Aid for Trade Global Review and I hope I can count on the presence
of as many of you as possible. Ahead of that, I also hope I can count on your
co-operation by providing the information we will be shortly asking for from
all stakeholders. The theme will be on connecting to value chains and
highlighting the important complementary role of the private sector.
And this
brings me to my fourth point, global value chains. These are not new phenomena.
But what is new is their reach, their depth and their potential made possible
by advances in communications and transportation technology. Value chains bind
countries together and given that much of the focus of the ACP has been on
strengthening regional integration, these should be seen as an opportunity — an
opportunity to insert parts of your economy into a regional and global network
of production and distribution where potential for technological transfer and
moving up the value chain exists. Today almost 60 per cent of trade in goods is
in intermediates or trade in tasks. Around 40 per cent of world exports are in
fact imported inputs and this shows the futility of pursuing trade
protectionism. Products and services are often bound together. There is in
production chains a potential for ACP countries to move up the value ladder.
A final
point I would like to make is on non-tariff measures (NTMs). Tariffs are
decreasing in importance and non-tariff measures such as technical standards,
health and safety requirements, and services regulation now have a greater
potential to be obstacles to trade. They may be seeking to address legitimate
concerns and the collective aim should be to create a level playing field to
ensure consistency and transparency in their application. This is where
capacity building to help countries to recognize, identify and address these
NTMs is critical. The Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF) plays
this role in the area of sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures, and Aid for
Trade programmes can be important vectors to increase developing country compliance
with these measures. In this area, many of you have already flagged the issue
of private standards. I agree that they deserve specific attention and
discussion in the relevant WTO body, the SPS committee.
What is
clear from these five elements that I have briefly discussed today is how
inter-related they all are and how important your work in the WTO is to
addressing these which are all relevant to your trade. The Doha Development
Round may not be as active as we would all want, but as you can see, the need
to work continues on many important fronts, especially in areas of direct
importance to the ACP.
Finally, a
word about the Stakeholder Panel on the Future of Trade that I launched earlier
this year. The views of the ACP on what you consider to be the present and
future priorities for the multilateral trading system are essential to making
that process relevant and useful. Former Botswana President Mogae, who has
kindly accepted to put his experience at the service of the panel, and I will
host a meeting on this matter in the margins of the upcoming African Union
Trade Ministerial and I look forward to your contributions on this matter.
Fuente: OMC