“Let there be no encore of July,
2008, when WTO members had come close to signing a deal on
the Doha Development Agenda”, said Pradeep S Mehta,
Secretary General of CUTS International and former member of
the WTO’s High Level Panel on the Future of Trade in the
21st Century. “There was no deal on the full package of the
DDA at Geneva in 2008, and the efforts now to get a small
package face the same gloomy prospects”.
If Bali flops then the
credibility of the WTO will take a great hit, and the
developing world will be worse off. Already the DDA is not
moving anywhere to restore the central role of development
in the multilateral trading system, because of recalcitrance
on the part of the rich countries. “They are happy to expand
their trade liberalisation agenda through preferential trade
agreements, which do not cover the whole world”, said Mehta.
The July, 2008 deal had
collapsed due to the purported stand-off between USA and
China and India on agriculture safeguards, while in fact the
USA was not prepared to deal with its cotton subsidies.
According to many pundits, the USA was the major cause for
the failure, but tried to pin the blame on India and China.
Once again, India is being
singled out as the spoilsport in Bali, because of its
principled stand on public stockholding of food and the need
for a carve out in the declaration to allow the ceilings
revised to current level of prices rather than the 1986
prices as in the farm agreement agreed in 1994.
Cotton is no longer an issue
because of rising prices and the poor West African cotton
producing countries are happy with the draft Bali text,
because they are not being disadvantaged by the less
efficient US producers.
Hope still remains that better
sense will prevail this time and a deal will be reached at
Bali later today. A positive outcome at Bali will be good
for all its members, for the global economy, and for
multilateralism in general. |