Road to regional and global prosperity

• Pages: 304-308

Page 304

The program of seminars-open to nonofficial visitors as well as officials of governments and international organizations-held September 20-22 in Dubai covered a range of issues of concern to the international community. Among the topics were the implications of the collapsed trade talks in Cancún, foreign direct investment in emerging markets, prospects for achieving the Millennium Development Goals, the role of the IMF in low-income countries (see box, page 305), and the role of official communication in the success of economic and financial policies (see box, page 306). (For seminars that focused on the Middle East, see IMF Survey, October 6, pages 284-86, and boxes below and on page 307.)

The failure to reach agreement at Cancún on the next steps in the Doha Round ofWorld Trade Organization (WTO) trade negotiations was widely deplored at the Annual Meetings.Many officials and other participants warned that delays in liberalizing trade rules and reducing trade-distorting subsidies and other practices harmed everyone, developing countries most of all.World Bank Chief Economist Nicholas Stern quoted Bank estimates that developing countries could gain up to $350 billion in additional income from trade by 2015 if the Doha Round succeeded.

Stern and fellow panelists Eduardo Perez Motta (Mexico's Ambassador to the WTO), Francisco Thompson-Flôres (WTO's Deputy Director General), and Rashid S. Kaukab (Coordinator of the South Center's Work Program on Trade and Development) agreed that the negotiations had been complicated by the broadening of the agenda and the wide differences of view remaining on the eve of the talks. But Thompson-Flôres emphasized that substantial progress had been made in negotiations on agricultural, nonagricultural, and development- related trade issues. According to the panel, the talks broke down primarily because of disagreements about whether and how to include the so-called Singapore issues (investment, competition, trade facilitation, and government procurement policies affecting trade). However, Kaukab noted that the negotiation process itself had alsoPage 305 become a sticking point for many developing countries.

Will governments be able to muster the political will to put the negotiations back on track? This question, according to the panelists, will be on everyone's mind.

Motta urged four steps for the near term: avoid finger pointing about Cancún...