United News of Bangladesh | Dhaka, Nov 4
Bangladesh will seek more efforts from the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for arresting further marginalisation of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), hit hard by multilateral trading system for the last few years.
In the fourth WTO ministerial meeting, scheduled in Doha on Nov. 9-13, Bangladesh will also plead not to use environmental clauses as protectionist measures to again corner the LDCs in world trade regime.
As a former coordinator for LDCs, Bangladesh has already prepared a draft for the WTO meet suggesting some amendments to the draft ministerial declaration to be adopted at Doha Conference. However, Bangladesh position at the conference will be to achieve duty-free and quota-free market access of LDCs products to the rich countries.
The draft declaration, prepared by WTO General Council, contains 42 paragraphs proposing a broad and balanced work programme to ensure that all member countries benefit equally from the opportunities of the multilateral trading arrangement and that the LDCs are integrated more effectively to the new era of international trade.
Bangladesh will propose amendments to five paragraphs, reconfirming the increasing need for further flexibility and liberalisation in the globalisation of services and movement of human resources.
"We take note of the urgent need of the LDCs to improve upon their existing trade facilitation measures with the help of development partners," one of the proposed amendments says, attaching the country's need for technical assistance and support for trade capacity building.
It will also stress the need for mandating increased flow of improved technology to the LDCs along with the expansion of global trade.
The work programme, proposed in the ministerial declaration, attaches importance on the implementation issues and related concerns of LDCs. It also calls for continuing the negotiations on free movement of services, including natural persons, as raised by the LDCs in earlier conferences.
The declaration will call for reducing or eliminating tariffs and non-tariff barriers to provide LDCs with market access. The integrated framework for trade-related technical assistance for LDCs will be acknowledged and endorsed in the fourth WTO ministerial meet as a viable model for LDCs trade development.
For further integration of the LDCs into the multilateral trading system, a combined and inter-related action will be undertaken at three levels - market access, trade related-technical assistance and capacity building - and LDCs' domestic policy reforms.
Trade diplomats here want Bangladesh to raise the issue of implementation of the pledges earlier made by rich partners in various rounds of talks in the past. Not mere repetition of commitments: now is the time for implementation of previous ones - was the central theme of a recent dialogue in Dhaka on WTO meet.United News of Bangladesh:
