DDG Singh: WTO provides flexibilities for developing-country farmers
26 Jan 2009
Deputy Director-General Harsha V. Singh, in a statement at the High Level Meeting on Food Security on 26 January 2009, said that the WTO provides flexibilities to developing countries in addressing food security, including domestic policy initiatives such as seeds, fertilizers and focus on small farmers
High-level Meeting on Food Security — Madrid
We have evidence that food prices, even after declining from last year, are still high by historical standards. Combined with the present economic slowdown, we continue to face a crisis with respect to food security. Even in this new situation, the underlying principles and conclusions encompassed in the Comprehensive Framework of Action (CFA) and the Rome Declaration remain valid, and are even more urgent to emphasize.
With respect to trade policies, the CFA emphasizes inter alia:
keeping in mind the effects on poor consumers and farmers,
reducing restrictions, including tariffs, and other distortions in the trade policy regime,
improving trade facilitation,
rapidly completing the Doha Round of trade negotiations to provide an enhanced set of agreed rules for a more transparent and fair international trading system, and implementing an "Aid for Trade" package to strengthen the capacity of developing countries.
The Declaration from the Rome meeting last year also emphasizes these initiatives. It also notes that new opportunities arise for developing countries through international trade. This is both due to larger market opportunities and through access to cheaper food that international trade provides. For poor countries, international trade is particularly important. Net food-importing countries, which include the most vulnerable, rely on imports for a large portion of their domestic requirements, ranging from about a quarter to even more than half of their domestic requirement. Trade allows supply to adjust to demand, and helps raise the availability of food in comparison to the situation when markets are restricted. Noteworthy in this context is also a recent assessment by von Braun of IFPRI that self sufficiency is not a solution to the food price crisis.
When we consider the types of trade policy responses of various countries to the current global food crisis, we can see that many more countries have relied on trade liberalization than on trade restriction. For instance, in a data set covering 104 countries for the period from 2006 to August 2008, IFPRI has shown that while only 20 countries used trade restrictions, more than double, i.e. 47 countries, relied on trade liberalization. Of these, 16 countries used both trade restrictions and trade liberalization policies. Thus, in some cases we had the same country responding with trade liberalization in order to allow cheaper food imports, but using export restrictions with respect to exports.
