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| Wednesday, 15 October 2003 |
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Politics | |
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| Bilateral trade pacts a better alternative - President President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga told a news conference in Singapore yesterday that the post-Cancun focus on bilateral and regional trade agreements appeared to be a better alternative than multilateral deals. President Kumaratunga said Sri Lanka was looking to sign free trade agreements with Pakistan, the United States and Singapore, and was hoping to join the 10-member Association of Southeast Asians (ASEAN) as a dialogue partner. She delivered a lecture to regional business leaders at the World Economic Forum's East Asia summit in Singapore focused on many of the themes that led to the World Trade Organisation's (WTO's) recent troubles. "The World Trade Organisation and world trade agenda will have to be renegotiated. The principles and underlying positions on trade must definitely be the same for the developed and developing nations," she said. Poor nations at the Cancun Summit gathered together to form the Group of 22, or G-22, to challenge the rich countries on the fairness of globalisation. Chief among the G-22's concerns was the issue of agricultural subsidies rich nations - primarily the United States, Japan and those from Western Europe - give to their farmers. Kumaratunga reiterated the G-22's accusations of hypocrisy, asking why the rich nations demanded the poor remove their subsidies to vital industries while not doing the same themselves. "Policies regarding subsidies and competitive markets must be the same for all states," she said. "We do not comprehend how rich nations demand of us to abandon to the whims of the global markets vulnerable sectors of our society ... when they practise extensive protectionist policies for these sectors in their countries." Kumaratunga said the figures put out by rich countries claiming the world was becoming richer and more developed under existing global trade rules were often a mirage."The developed and powerful nations will have to realise there are millions of humans waiting on the sidelines to share the fruits of development. "It is time for the rich and developed nations to give their technology, knowledge and financial assistance not only with the objective of securing contracts for their nationals, but also to alleviate poverty." The G-22 has over the past week moved to rebuild some of the bridges with the rich that were torn down at Cancun, with many from the group recommitting themselves to multilateral trade - but on the proviso of equality. AFP |
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