EDITORIAL: Striving for free and fair trade

HAVING had a chance to hear from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) official who was in Barbados two weeks ago, it is now left to be seen whether his presentation will likely impact on this country’s plans to ramp up its international trade policy.

Dr. Mukhisa Kituyi, Secretary General of UNCTAD, spoke at length about the global trading system and how small states will have to manoeuvre in that space as they go about devising new rules for trade. From a Barbados perspective, trade policy means seeking export markets for the goods and services created and in particular the markets of the industrialised countries.

Barbados also wants to see a well-functioning World Trade Organisation (WTO), which means ensuring free and fair trade, and that decisions made are adhered to by the bigger countries.

From the lecture presented by Dr. Kituyi, it appears the shift from multilateralism – which is what the WTO is about, is picking up speed and leaning more towards bilateralism – which is about trade relations between two countries. Small states have placed their emphasis on the multilateral process, simply because they stand a better chance of concluding benefits as opposed to bilateral, which could see them giving away more than is necessary.

Barbados and other Caribbean countries have over the course of the last two decades given their full support to the multilateral trading system, which continues to evolve with the emergence of the WTO.

While both the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations – out of which the WTO was formed in the mid-1990s, and the more recent Doha Trade Round offered these countries (on paper) a lot, it can be said that today they are still waiting to quantify any of the trade benefits that should have come their way.

They are disappointed simply because the big players in the WTO have not kept their promises. Particularly at Uruguay, small states were promised market opening for their goods and services; they were also to benefit from Special and Differential treatment in that there would be a longer phase-in period for them to open their markets for products from the bigger countries; financial assistance to manage their trade regime; and to attend conferences held under the auspices of the WTO and support to industries to make them more competitive.

The response by the industrialised countries to the concerns raised by small countries following Uruguay is to hold on while they put systems in place to meet the requests of small countries.

These were topics that surfaced again at Doha, which started at the turn of the year 2000. We can even recall the controversy which erupted at the WTO’s Ministerial meeting in Seattle, Washington, and the stalemates at subsequent WTO meetings.

These countries have liberalised their economies: cutting tariffs and other support to their own industries while opening up their markets to the goods from big countries.

Currently the United States, the UK, Europe and Canada absorb a considerable amount of Barbados’ exports. In the Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and the OECS as a Group account for the lion share of our exports. For the big countries, however, they have to stick to their promises rather than looking to abandon the multilateral process.