WTO steals limelight as ASEAN thrashes out accords
WTO steals limelight as ASEAN thrashes out accords
Luke Hunt, Agence France-Presse, Vientiane
Some 16 regional countries wrapped-up a three day conference here on Friday, pledging to promote global trade when the WTO meets in Hong Kong later this year, to reduce poverty and combat record oil prices.
The talks were designed by the 10-nation Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to further its own free trade agenda.
But it was the World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in Hong Kong in December that grabbed the lion's share of attention with trade and economic ministers raising hopes of a breakthrough that could lead to the implementation of the Doha liberalization round.
Delegate spokesman for India S.N. Melon said the WTO talks were at an advanced stage, with negotiators plotting a roadmap which could deliver success at the summit.
"The general view is for some kind of breakthrough, hopefully by next month or mid-November," he told journalists.
ASEAN also pledged its support for the implementation of the Doha round which ran into a deep impasse at the 2003 WTO meeting at the Mexican beach resort of Cancun.
This was mainly due to differences over farm trade and market access for services, and negotiators have been struggling since to get the negotiations back on track in time for a broad agreement in Hong Kong.
Pushing for the talks in Hong Kong to succeed, the United States, European Union and a handful of other key players, including Australia, will meet in October in Switzerland to try to keep the talks going.
On Thursday, China, Japan and South Korea said they would work towards a successful resolution in Hong Kong while Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile added there was an even chance of success.
Vaile said that for Hong Kong to succeed, the ministerial conference had to deliver a formulae for reducing tariffs and subsidies to allow the implementation of Doha by the end of next year.
Whilst ASEAN ranks and its dialogue partners might have been upbeat on the WTO talks, others were not totally convinced by the positive tone.
Jonathan Hopfner a trade specialist and journalist with U.S.-based BNA publications, said it was unlikely the deadlines for a swathe of Free Trade Agreements (FTA) over the next five years will be met.
"When you're talking about Australia, Japan and South Korea, agriculture and services are the big issues and there's a lot of arguments about rules of origin and the free movement of labor across borders.
"There's almost no attempt to address any of these issues."
"You'll get agreements but they will be so hobbled with exceptions for sensitive sectors that they're not really going to be free trade agreements at all," Hopfner said.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, and is aiming to create a fully integrated economic community by 2020.
Further FTAs are being thrashed out with Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and India.
In a bid to deal with historically high oil prices ministers raised the prospect of constructing an east Asian oil stockpile.
But the sensitive issues of where it would be located and how it would be paid for -- with crude hovering around US$65 a barrel -- were not dealt with and referred to a working committee.
This prompted a playful response from Australia's Vaile, who quipped: "It's not really something the World bank or the Asian Development bank are likely to fund."
Vaile said despite complaints over too many ministerial talkfests -- Lao bemoaned too many meetings were proving too expensive -- countries had to be prepared to invest the time.
"Look at what's been achieved in terms of strengthening the regional architecture in the last four or five years," he said. "Some of the challenges we confronted with the region then have just totally just dissipated."