Outcome of WTO’s MC10 frustrating for B’desh: CPD [ Tritiyo Matra News ]

Outcome of WTO’s MC10 frustrating for B’desh: CPD

Local December 24, 2015

The Centre for Policy Dialogue on Wednesday termed the outcome of the 10th ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation frustrating for the least developed countries like Bangladesh.
At a press briefing on the outcomes of two global events on UN climate change and WTO ministerial conference in Dhaka, the CPD said that the LDCs did not get any additional benefits, except flexibility on preferential rules of origin, from the conference held at Nairobi in Kenya in December 15-18 as there was no development on duty-free and quota-free market access, aid for trade and preferential waiver on trade of services.
UN climate change conference, known as COP21, was held in Paris of France from November 30 to December 12.
Commerce minister Tofail Ahmed who led the Bangladesh delegation to the conference, however, on Monday termed the conference successful saying that the ministerial declaration would bring huge trade benefits for goods and services originating from Bangladesh.
‘We were enormously successful in addressing issues of Bangladesh and other 47 least developed countries at the conference,’ he said at a post-conference press briefing at the ministry in Dhaka.
Elaborating, the minister said the Nairobi Declaration lowered the rules of origin or value addition criteria to 25 per cent for LDCs in their way to get duty-free market access to developed countries from the existing 30 per cent to 40 per cent depending on country to country.
In reply to a question regarding the commerce minister’s claim, CPD executive director Mustafizur Rahman said that everyone might have personal evaluation whether the conference was successful or not.
‘But as a citizen and trade expert, I must say that the outcome of the conference is very frustrating for the LDCs including Bangladesh as it did not bring any additional benefit, except relaxation in rules of origin, in the field of preferential market access, services waiver and aid for trade.’
He said, ‘We expected more progress in the ministerial conference than the Geneva discussion in November.’
The modality of discussion was not inclusive as mainly USA, EU, China, India and Brazil dominated the negotiations keeping outside the LDCs, main stakeholders of the conference, he said.
‘The conference failed to bring any headway in preferential market access to the LDCs except relaxation in rules of origin which I can say a small mercy,’ CPD distinguished fellow Debapriya Bhattacharya said.
He said that the conference was held in a time when some big countries and regions were moving with the idea of creating plurilateral mega blocks of preferential trade beyond the WTO.
Bangladesh should prepare an action plan on how to reap the benefits from the multilateral, plurilateral, regional and bilateral trading system within and out of WTO in the changed context of global economy, he said.
The country will also have to conduct research and evaluation on how to utilise the emerging opportunities from the pluralateral trade agreements including US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership, he said.
Bangladesh may consider joining at the TPP or sign bilateral agreement with a member country for getting duty-free market access to the US, he suggested.
Coordination among the government agencies in global negotiations on preferential market access, investment, services waiver, climate change and transfer of technology is required, he said.
On the outcome of COP21, the CPD said that the Paris agreement was not a perfect agreement though it was considered as a historic one.
‘Though the major green house gas emitting countries pledged to cut emission to a certain level by 2030, the pledge is not legally binding one,’ CPD research director Fahmida Khatun said.
But for the developing countries, the major issue is finance for adaptation to fight adverse effect of climate change, she said.
Though the countries pledged to provide climate finance to the developing countries but previous experiences said that the commitment remained unfulfilled, she added.
CPD additional research director Khondaker Golam Moazzem and senior research fellow Towfiqul Islam Khan were present at the briefing.