Good Luck, Mr. Lamy!

The forthcoming 6th WTO Ministerial in Hong Kong poses tough challenges for the new Director General of WTO, Pascal Lamy, says TK Bhaumik.

There are just a few months to go before the Sixth WTO Ministerial commences in Hong Kong, where the Doha negotiations are expected to have experience some defining moments.  The Doha negotiations, which were launched by Mr.Mike Moore (the then DG of WTO) in September 2001, have been steered since then by Dr. Panitchpakdi. And after negotiating some turbulent waters, I am sure he would be happy to pass on the stewardship to the new DG Mr. Pascal Lamy. Mr.Lamy, a veteran and seasoned negotiator, is a well known personality.  He is not new to the job, and can hold the reins firmly right from the beginning.  What is not so well known, and that is where he would be tested, is his ability to strike a bargain, involving 148 WTO members having diverse interests and concerns.  He will have three months to prove his mettle.    

So what are the deliverables?  Plain and simple - during the Hongkong Ministerial every WTO Member would like to see the faltering Doha negotiations reaching  its conclusion.  As things stand now, this appears to be a big expectation. Many of us - and I include myself among this group -  feel that the Hongkong Ministerial may even go the Cancun way.  To ensure that it does not is the challenge before Mr. Lamy, who has to immediately (on resuming office) pick up the thread of the July 2004 Framework Agreement from where it was left in July 2005.  By July 2005, the WTO Members were supposed to have arrived at an approximation (July Approximation) of a framework for modalities of negotiations on agriculture and non-agricultural market access (NAMA).  Time allotted was one year from July 2004.  By July 2005, when the General Council met in Geneva, the Members were, however, far from the proposed approximation.  The mini-Ministerial in Dalian (China) during the month failed to provide a boost to the stale debate in Geneva.

So there has been little progress on the July 2004 framework.  In Geneva, work is progressing on a draft declaration for the Hongkong Ministerial.  I am sure the Geneva-based negotiators are on the job, but it is difficult to imagine what they are working on.  Agriculture and NAMA are the two issues where modalities negotiations have to be completed, but the Members are not yet near the approximation. Worse, the Members are still talking of their positions and not the 'substance' that is necessary for convergence.   This had been a major cause of worry and Dr. Supachai at a meeting of the group of about 30 Ministers in Dalian, had called upon them for political commitments.  The commitments are still elusive, particularly in agriculture negotiations.

It's not just  the US and the EU that are to blame for this situation.  The G-20 is equally responsible.  In fact, ever since the Cancun days, WTO has been the victim of a messy interface among the US, the EU and the G-20 all being equally crafty and cunning.  As DG, Mr. Lamy has to deal with the three, and prove that he is the smartest of all.  He, however, is likely to find it difficult going to negotiate with the G-20, particularly since he was not the initial choice of G-20 members. He is also likely to have enormous difficulties with the EU and would need to work closely with Mr.Peter Mandelson, his successor and  current EU Trade Commissioner.

Yet another challenge that he would have to face is in dealing with the G-90, a group of  developing countries mainly from the African continent.  They have many issues ranging from TRIPs to commodity prices, debt reliefs and so on.  Some of the issues are both difficult and tricky.  For instance, issues like TRIPs and public health, bio-diversity, fluctuation in commodity prices, etc. are not easily amenable to solutions.  More importantly, a majority of the G-90 members want the Doha round free for themselves i.e. they don’t want to make any commitments.  Understandably, Mr. Lamy  has no problem with this, but he is after all the DG, WTO .  Interestingly, more than ten years since establishment of WTO, its DG has practically lost all authority.  Mr. Lamy has to face this hardship as well.  Selling the cause of G-90 to the US, the EU and even to G-20 would be an onerous task.  But G-90, in my view, may pose the biggest threat to the success of the Hong Kong Ministerial this December.         
                                                    
TK Bhaumik is an independent consultant and was formerly Senior Advisor at the Confederation of Indian Industry<-span>