The Trade Ministers of World Trade Organisation’s 159 Members are meeting these
days in Bali, Indonesia, in the organisation’s 9th Ministerial Conference.
After an announcement by WTO Director General, Roberto Azevêdo, that the
negotiations in Geneva were not fruitful, the Ministers are expected to
continue negotiating in three areas: on food security, LDC package and trade
facilitation even though a negotiating ministerial was not foreseen and many
delegations do not have their main negotiators in Bali. The International Trade
Union Confederation (ITUC) and its Global Unions partners published today a statement on the WTO Ministerial
Conference encouraging governments to only sign a deal that takes steps
towards the implementation of the developmental mandate of the Doha Development
Agenda, strengthens food security and assists the economies of Least Developed
Countries (LDCs).
“An agreement on agriculture that would protect governments’ power to
purchase food from farmers and enact food programmes will have great impact on
the most vulnerable of people – one billion of those depend on subsistence agricultural
activities” said Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of ITUC. However, in
its current form, the so-called ‘peace clause’ would only be a temporary
measure, which is a prize too high in exchange for a binding Trade Facilitation
Agreement.
Agriculture, development and trade facilitation are not the only issues discussed at Bali. The negotiations for an expanded Information Technology Agreement (ITA-II) collapsed and no new date for the restart of negotiations has been announced. However, the Ministers will most probably discuss this issue and decide on the way forward. Earlier this year, a broad coalition of trade unions and civil society organisations addressed a letter to the negotiating Members of the ITA-II that warned developing countries of possible erosion of domestic manufacturing and loss of growth potential in higher value-added segments of information technology manufacturing.