Lamy: WTO is working to mitigate impact of economic crisis on trade
22 Jan 2009
Director-General Pascal Lamy, in remarks at the United Kingdom's Department for International Development on 22 January 2009, said that the WTO will soon issue periodic reports on global trade trends to facilitate members' discussions on coping with the economic crisis, and would be organizing further meetings on trade finance.
He commended the Department for being "a global leader in promoting trade as an engine for growth and development". This is what he said:
Let me begin by saying how happy I am for this opportunity to interact with you this morning. It occurred to me on my way here this morning that today's interaction will be a unique one. It will be unique in that I will be addressing and interacting with the converted. I do not have to convince you about the interdependence between trade opening and development. I do not have to convince you that trade opening leads to development if the conditions are right, nor do I have to convince you that development is a pre-requisite for increased trade flows. The
It is this conviction that trade is good for development that motivated the majority of us in 2001 to push for a development round in the WTO. This was also based on the realisation that the multilateral trading system as it exists today contains, within its rules and disciplines, imbalances that continue to penalise developing countries, thereby limiting and frustrating their developmental aspirations. This objective to level the playing field and to provide developing countries with better conditions to enable them to reap the benefits of trade opening remains as valid today as it was in 2001 when the DDA was launched.
The challenge to reform and rebalance the multilateral trading system has now been further made more urgent by the current global economic crisis. There is no doubt that this crisis will have profound and possibly prolonged effects on developing countries, the least developed among them in particular, whose recent good economic performance has been largely driven by external factors. The reality is that their chief exports — oil, minerals, agricultural commodities, textiles and clothing as well as tourism — are already experiencing substantial reductions as global demand shrinks. Add to this the fact that the crisis is also impacting negatively on external sources of funds, such as foreign direct investment or remittances which greatly contribute to these economies and you have a recipe for a potentially explosive economic and social situation.
