WTO Ministerial Section • Volume 7 • Number 22 • 18th June 2003
CTD Considers Technical Assistance, Regional Arrangements, Primary Commodities
The 45th Session of the WTO Committee on Trade and Development (CTD) met on 22 May and again on 15 June to review, inter alia: the 2002 Technical Cooperation Audit and the 2003 Technical Assistance Plan; the procedures for notifying regional trading arrangements between developing countries; and the mandate of having sustainable development appropriately reflected at the WTO. In addition, three developing country Members submitted a ‘non-paper’ on the need for WTO action regarding the long-term decline in the prices of primary commodities. On 22 May, Members elected Ambassador Habib Mansour of Tunisia as the new Chair of the Committee.
Technical Assistance
Since the 2001 WTO Ministerial Conference in Doha placed a renewed focus on technical assistance, (see Doha Briefing No. 12), a great part of the CTD’s time has been spent on the design and monitoring of the WTO’s technical assistance (TA) activities. Discussions at the 22 May meeting focused both on the 2003 TA plan, as well as an audit of the WTO’s technical cooperation activities for 2002 (WT/COMTD/W/112 & WT/COMTD/W/111, both searchable at http://docsonline.wto.org). The latter was reported by one trade source as "generally well received" by all Members, with both donors and beneficiaries making comments regarding their respective concerns that the TA activities are useful and managed efficiently.While the audit lauded the results of the TA activities, it did note that the most frequently applied form of evaluation was self-evaluation by the TA providers. Some of the lessons learned identified for 2003 were similar to those derived from the 2002 evaluation (WT/COMTD/W/97), and the report stated that "organisational learning is an on-going but slow process." It also recognised that the emphasis in the prevailing approach to TA in the WTO was more on quantity than quality. Further, the very short duration of TA activities and the often great number of participants (sometimes 40 to 100 persons) allowed more for dissemination of information and awareness creation than for real skills development and capacity-building. Ad hoc activities, which generally were not subject to evaluation, comprised 27% of all TA activities (130 of 481). The most popular sectoral areas of TA were services (29.52%), followed by SPS/TBT (18%), dispute settlement (13.3%) and agricultural issues (11.4%). On the issue of financing of the TA programmes, the report indicated that of the over ten million CHF pledged, only just under three million had been received.
RTAs
Regarding the notification procedures for regional trade agreements (RTAs) among developing countries, the Secretariat circulated a note (WT/COMTD/W/114), focussing in particular on where RTAs among developing countries should be notified. Traditionally notification has occurred in the CTD under the Enabling Clause, with reports simply taken note of. The Secretariat paper argues that as these RTAs increasingly deal with trade in services, they should be notified (and thus examined in greater detail) in the Committee on Regional Trade Agreements. The Enabling Clause only covers trade in goods. One trade source indicated that a strong reasoning behind the demands for this change in procedure (demanded mostly by developed countries, and in particular the US) is to ensure a more thorough examination of any preferential deals signed by China and other developing countries. A WTO official noted that developing countries were not in favour of the paper’s conclusions, while the US was.
Declining terms of trade
A non-paper was submitted on 22 May by Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania (WT/COMTD/W/113) on the "serious problem posed by the long term trend towards decline in prices of primary commodities to the trade and development of countries which are heavily dependent on commodity exports". The paper recommends, inter alia, that the WTO recommence concentrated work on the problems related to the declining prices of primary commodities, including tropical products — as was done in the Kennedy, Tokyo, and Uruguay Rounds. According to trade sources, the discussions at the CTD session on this matter were brief, but that the Chair would hold further informal consultations.
Sustainable Development
Following up on the mandate from paragraph 51 of the Doha Declaration, which instructs both the CTD and the Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE) to "act as a forum to identify and debate developmental and environmental aspects of the negotiations, in order to help achieve the objective of having sustainable development appropriately reflected," Thomas Friedheim from the WTO’s Agriculture division gave a presentation on the development issues dealt with in the Committee on Agriculture (see http://www.ictsd.org/issarea/ag).
Friedheim’s report highlighted work in the Committee on Agriculture to deal with developed country export subsidies and trade-distorting domestic support; the switch of support from one product to another or from one subsidy category to another, without any tangible liberalising effect; the wide divergence on the nature and scope of instruments for special and differential treatment (S&D); and also the concern of higher food import bills for least developed countries (LDCs) and net food-importing developing countries (NFIDCs) as a result of export subsidy reductions. Few reactions were reported by Members. The EU did request that a similar presentation be made on non-agricultural market access negotiations. All Members agreed.
Electronic commerce
Briefly, Tunisia announced the World Summit on the Information Society that will take place in Geneva in December 2003 and in Tunis in November 2005. Members asked that the CTD prepare a factual update of ecommerce discussions in the CTD for the General Council, which has to report on further progress to the 5th Ministerial Conference.
Information on the World Summit on the Information Society can be found at http://www.itu.int/wsis/index.html.
ICTSD reporting.