Raw deal from world trade talks in Hong Kong

The agreement provides for elimination of subsidy of agricultural exports by the developed countries, effective not immediately but in 2013, after seven years. Perhaps they do not want to offend the powerful agribusiness corporations who wield enormous political and economic influence and clout. The agreement does not mention at all any deadline for the withdrawal of farm subsidy by the United States and the EU which provide one billion dollars a day as farm subsidy and subsidizes a cow by $2 a day heavily depressing the primary agricultural produce of developing countries, The products of poor farmers are priced out in domestic and international markets in competition with cheap and subsidized exports from developed countries.

Exports of cotton , rice, coffee, sugar , orange juice, tobacco, wheat, beef and soyabean from Asia, Africa and Latin American third world countries face adverse and distorted international trade regime. America spends $ 4 billion a year subsidizing its 25000 cotton growers, harming 10 million sub Saharan cotton growers. American food aid to developing countries which indirectly helps American farmers also discourages local farmers, distorts food trade to the harm of poor farmers .

While preaching the rhetoric of 'free trade' for the developing countries , the agreement does not provide any blanket duty and quota free access of goods to markets of developed countries but only as a special preferential treatment to the 50 least developed countries offers 97 percent access for their products. Bangladesh garment industry will receive a hard knock by this three percent exclusion list which covers access of textiles to US market. The EU, however, already provides access to everything other than arms from the least developed countries. It is not known why the group of 20 led by India, Brazil, South Africa, China and other emerging large economies which negotiated on behalf of the developing countries signed up the conference declaration which is highly skewed, unequal and discriminatory. The Marrakesh declaration of 1995 after 10 years of Uruguay round of trade negotiation under GATT provided for setting up WTO and its decisions by consensus. G20 could very well veto the draft declaration or was it a sellout? One can only speculate and pity helplessness of a non-performing high powered Bangladesh delegation from Dhaka and Geneva.

The declaration provides a plan by USA, EU and Japan to finance millions of dollars in aid to developing countries to help compensate their loss in global trade by improving the port, highways and shipping facilities. This may be a ploy to hedge the design of developed countries to boost their export of service industries to develop infrastructure and perpetuate the dependency syndrome of developing countries without opportunities of achieving self reliance. Aid for trade will lock the third world countries in debt and not promote development.

Hong Kong trade talks declaration scripted by WTO speaks of the tired mantra and discredited rhetoric of structural adjustment, free trade, open market, investment and privatization, precisely the language of globalization and Washington consensus prescribed by the World Bank and IMF as panacea to accelerate the economic growth of developing countries. But the prescription far from bringing equilibrium and balance in the existing economic disparity between the rich and poor countries has aggravated the gap between the two. It has widened the disparity between the rich and the poor within the society exacerbating the misery, sufferings and destitution of the poor.

The consequences of unrestricted access of industrial goods and service industries including bank, insurance and telecommunication and other corporate business in developing countries are all there for us to see. Privatization campaign is now extending beyond banks and factories to electricity and water, two vital resources which will remain beyond the affordability of the poor. Bright and glittering shopping malls and super markets which have sprung overnight are stacked with imported goods chasing and wiping out local products. Local manufacturing industries are unable to compete with cheap and subsidized foreign products without tariff protection. The local construction materials have been priced out of business by the competing imported European fittings and fixtures. The unrestricted import of luxury vehicles as well as cheaper ones has destroyed the potential of developing local automobile industry to cater to the need of burgeoning middle class trapped by the lure of consumerism, competition and demonstration effect.

. The agreement cobbled together will not remove the restrictive line of market access that divides the developed and developing countries. It will not bring benefits to millions of poverty stricken people in developing countries but discard their development, national industrialization, food sovereignty, social welfare and equity. Instead, market access, liberalization of trade, international commerce and privatization are the guiding principles. The objective of the game seems to be free trade by forced intrusion of corporate globalization into poor countries and not development of the poor countries. What avails of such unequal and unjust multilateral economic dispensation under WTO, which does not serve the interest and concerns of developing countries? We had better opt out of it in favour of bilateral and regional trade arrangements.

Abdul Hannan is a former press counselor, Bangladesh UN Mission in New York.