WTO starts plenary session in Sharm el Sheikh today
Regional-Egypt, Economics, 6/21/2003

Some 33 ministers representing 29 countries held a plenary session on Friday ahead of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) informal two-day meeting to kick off Saturday under the chairmanship of Egyptian Minister of Foreign Trade Youssef Boutros Ghali.

Ghali said Friday that the Sharm el Sheikh meeting is the first informal consultative one to be held in a developing country after similar meeting were held in Sydney, Tokyo, Paris, Mexico city and Singapore.

He pointed out that the countries participating in the Sharm el Sheikh meeting, to be attended by WTO Director General Supachi Panitchpakdi, had a trade volume accounting for 75 percent of world trade, 70 percent of the global national product and 70 percent of the world population.

These consultative meetings, he said, aim in the first place at getting viewpoints closer among the member states as far as issues to be tabled at the Mexico conference are concerned, and in a way to render this gathering a success.

"Choosing Egypt as a venue for the meeting emanates from the fact that it has played a key role to champion the interests of the developing nations during the 3rd WTO ministerial conference in Seattle, USA, in December 1999 and the 4th conference held in the Qatari capital Doha in November 2001," said the Egyptian Minister of Foreign Trade.

"He said that Egypt's position was marked by objectivity, balance and concentration on issues serving the developing countries' best interests.

Developing nations must play a part in the decisions taken at the international trade cartel and that their roles should not be marginalized in the global trade system," he added.

Ghali elaborated that due to the importance of the Sharm el Sheikh meeting, which comes a couple of months ahead of the WTO ministerial conference in Cancun, Mexico, advanced nations had a strong participation, including the US, represented by Trade Representative Robert Zoelick, and the European Union represented by Trade Commissioner Pascal Lami.

The Egyptian Foreign Trade Minister said that the WTO must end negotiations over trade issues forwarded in January 2004 at the most.

He pointed out that the toughest issues tabled at Sharm el Sheikh meeting included trade in agro-products, which took long to deliberate considering the differences between the US and agricultural commodity producers, on the one hand, and the EU, on the other, pertaining to liberalization of this trade and access to markets.

The US is calling for canceling the subsidization of Agro-exports, while the EU wants to keep it in place.

Ghali elaborated that Egypt was for working on gradually decreasing subsidy for exports granted by advanced nations to agricultural products as well as removing all "trade-distorting tariffs" in the agro-products sector, a matter that would help open up the markets of advanced nations to exports from developing countries.

"Egypt, hence, supports giving developing countries a preferential privilege as regards the stretching of a grace period," said Ghali.

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