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WTO Director-General Mike Moore
Replies to interview questions
Agriculture, Fisheries and Livestock News, Rep of Korea.

11 January 2002

1. Could you please share your assessment of the New Round and the contents of the Doha Declaration with us?

There is enough in the Doha package for everyone. Trade is not the only development factor, but it''s an important motor for growth and for economic recovery. The Republic of Korea has a lot to teach the world in this regard.

The work programme agreed at Doha contains more than the new negotiations. In particular there is also work on a long list of issues known as "implementation" - the problems developing countries face implementing the results of the last major negotiation, the Uruguay Round, which ended in 1994. That''s why we call the whole package the Doha Development Agenda. It''s about sustainable growth, economic justice and customers of the future.

But the new negotiations are the most important part of the agenda. They invigorate and extend existing negotiations for liberalizing access to markets which are the core business of the WTO. The negotiations on agriculture and services are already two years old. They will move into a higher gear. Success in both will bring big gains.

The Doha Declaration has now added vitally important negotiations on tariffs and non-tariff barriers for industrial products. These will address the high tariffs that remain on a number of products that are or could be important exports from developing countries.

The agreement to establish multilateral frameworks of rules for competition policy and foreign direct investment could bring more coherence and simplicity to an area now dependent on a huge number of bilateral investment treaties - with negotiations proper on these will begin after the Fifth Ministerial Conference if the Members agree by explicit consensus.

Cutting barriers to trade would be like adding two more Chinas to the world economy. Three quarters of all the benefits from cutting industrial tariffs would go to developing countries. Each year developing countries command a larger and larger share of the industrialized world''s imports, from 15 per cent in 1990 to almost 25 percent in 2000. Half of Japan''s manufactured imports come from developing countries. For the US, the figure is 45 per cent and rising.

The Declaration also provides for possible negotiations after the Mexico Ministerial Conference in 2002 on transparency in government procurement and on trade facilitation. Members of APEC, which includes my country, New Zealand, and yours, the Republic of Korea, have done a lot of work on trade facilitation. APEC studies show there would be more economic gain from reforms in this area than in tariff reforms. A successful negotiation on this would go far to reduce the costs and delays involved in doing international business, especially for governments and business in smaller countries.

Trade and the environment was one of the most difficult issues at Doha. It could continue to be so. For the European Union and some others it was a high political priority to demonstrate that the WTO is capable of addressing public concerns about the impact of trade on sustainable development and the protection of the environment, while for many developing countries the issue was seen as a potential cover for protectionism. I am pleased that governments have been able to make a forward move in this area: they cannot afford to let it be said that the WTO system is deaf to widely shared public concerns, because trade liberalization also needs public support; it has many enemies. At the same time the mandate is clearly focused on the relationship between existing WTO rules and the trade obligations under international environmental agreements, trade liberalization for environmental goods and services, and monitoring the trade implications of various environmental measures.