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WTO in 2011 - A Crunch year for the Doha Development Round

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AFTINET has been active as usual in 2011 on the negotiations undertaken in the WTO.

17th November 2011: AFTINET sent a letter requesting that the Minister commit Australia to WTO reform which:

Facilitates Financial Stability not financial Deregulation
Focuses on Jobs and Industrial Development policy space
Maintains the right to protect policy space for development
Provides Access to Affordable Health and Medicines
Supports Food Security and Sovereignty
Protects Biodiversity and Bans the Patenting of Life
Acknowledges that WTO is not the venue for establishing climate change policy

For a copy of the letter follow this link.


25th October 2011: AFTINET wrote to the Minister requesting that Australia either support or at least that Australia not oppose a proposal to review WTO financial regulations put forward by Equador.

Whilst Australia appears to be well placed, the United States and much of the world are still reeling from the 2008 global financial crisis and threats of a renewed financial crisis. In various fora – from national legislatures to the G-20 to the UN – governments have promoted reregulation of the financial sector. We understand that a group of WTO member countries are advancing a proposal in the Committee on Trade in Financial Services for inclusion of a rather modest paragraph in the Declaration for the pending 8th Ministerial Conference. This paragraph calls on the Committee on Trade in Financial Services to review WTO rules on financial services in light of the crisis to promote and ensure sufficient policy space for macroprudential regulation. It is precisely because there are differing opinions as to whether current WTO rules provide sufficient policy space that members should engage in this timely conversation.  We strongly urge your government to support and not oppose this proposal, both within the Committee and in the General Council.

For a copy of the letter follow this link.

25th October 2011: Prime Minister Gillard announces an end to tariffs for the least developed countries accessing markets in Australia.

For a copy of the Prime Ministers announcement follow this link:
http://www.pm.gov.au/press-office/speech-commonwealth-business-forum-dinner-perth

17th October 2011: Minister Emerson delivers paper to WTO effectively calling the Doha Development Round dead and offering a new pathway for the WTO negotiations.

The proposed new pathway comprised of:

  • December downpayment on LDC issues combined with a standstill on protectionist barriers (this is a way of getting developing countries to lower their tariffs without any reciprocal action from the developed world).
  • An apparent downplaying mulitlateral negotiations and a move to plurilateral negotiations of a coalition of the willing to which others could subsequently join (think Government Procurement or ACTA - the Minister uses the Information Technology Agreement as the example).
  • Bringing forth new issues (the Singapore issues that developing countries have so far kept out of the Doha round).
  • Argues against low quality bilateral and regional FTA's but supports high quality ones and calls for revision of the rules of Bi-lateral and Regional FTA's under the WTO.(Not good news for our Pacific friends as this reinforces that the Australian Government views that PACER-Plus should be WTO compliant as a minimum)
  • Calls trade liberalisation "the magic of creating more global jobs and prosperity for sharing among the countries of the earth".

For a copy of the Ministers paper follow this link.

June 2011 - Vanuatu WTO Accession: AFTINET Writes in support of Civil Society opposition to Vanuatu accession to the WTO.

The Vanuatu Government and parliament is considering Vanuatu's accession to the WTO. Civil society, churches, chamber of commerce and many more Vanuatu organisations and invididuals have called for support in their campaign to stop the accession.

AFTINET has written a letter of support which you can download by following this link.

29th March 2011: AFTINET wrote to the Minister requesting information about Financial Services negotiations, requesting that Australia reject further financial deregulation and provides details of requests from other countries.

As the Doha Round World Trade Organization (WTO) expansion talks accelerate, reports from Geneva suggest that the United States, the European Union and others continue to ask other WTO members for more expansive service sector commitments under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Could you please inform us as to which countries are making services requests of Australia and what the requests entail?

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, it is alarming that any country would request further financial services commitments without significant reforms to the existing WTO rules that cover the financial services sector. The existing WTO rules covering financial services could undermine efforts underway in numerous countries to restore financial stability and build stronger financial regulatory structures. Thus, the demand to commit new financial sectors to these rules runs contrary to the global consensus that improved regulation is critical to restore stability and avoid future crises.

Leading economists, financial experts and trade lawyers have warned that WTO-style financial liberalization could undermine financial regulation. That is because the GATS rules conflate liberalization and deregulation, requiring that governments not maintain or establish a list of even non-discriminatory regulatory measures relating to capital management mechanisms, bans of risky services and products and more to the financial sectors they commit to GATS.

For a copy of the letter follow this link.