UK TO PUSH FOR WTO REFORM AT BANGKOK. Britain will continue pushing for reform of the World Trade Organization at a United Nations conference this weekend in Bangkok, encouraging talks on how to include other international bodies in global trade talks, reports Dow Jones. UK Trade Minister Richard Caborn Thursday said he will reiterate the government's call for consultative talks on WTO reform during the weekend ministerial UNCTAD.
The talks, to be conducted by a group of third-party "eminent persons," should look at closer relations between the WTO and other international bodies like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the U.N., Caborn said. The trade minister said there is room for closer cooperation between these global institutions, but their responsibilities should be divided up clearly to prevent the sort of failure that doomed the launch of a fresh round of international trade talks late last year in Seattle..
Anti-globalization activists yesterday challenged the UNCTAD to push for fundamental reform of world finance to "level the playing field" for developing nations, reports Agence France-Presse. NGOs demanded that delegates to UNCTAD-X, which opens in Bangkok on Saturday, halt the "usurping of rights by global institutions."
Delegates must fight "development-distorting" trade policies, the NGO coalition said in a statement presented to conference organizers. Global financial reform is vital, it said, as the current world economic system was weighted in favor of economic superpowers. The G7 nations have blatantly ignored the "crying need for a transformed global financial architecture," in the wake of the Asian economic crisis which erupted more than two years ago, it claimed.
Campaigners on behalf of developing nations frequently accuse the World Bank and the IMF of having made the situation worse after intervening in Asia when the crisis broke, the story says. "We are opposed to the usurping of the roles of national governments and citizens' democratic rights by global institutions such as the IMF," said the NGO coalition. Instead, the world must "develop a system of global governance that respects local democratic processes and is based on global conventions agreed at the UN."
Although organizers of UNCTAD-X have invited representatives of NGOs to observe next week's proceedings, the NGO statement included a call for a larger role. Parts of the anti-globalization community have vowed to hold demonstrations even though Thai officials have said only a token number of protestors will be allowed near the UNCTAD venue. Thai police have set aside designated areas for large protests and thousands of extra officers will be on duty.
The Washington Times (p.A15) also reports, noting that Thai authorities hope to stem possible demonstrations by giving activists an outlet for their complaints at organized forums through which they can air their concerns with officials from many countries. "We will put the street protestors into air conditioned discussion rooms," said a security official.
UNCTAD Secretary-General Rubens Ricupero yesterday assured NGOs that their points would be taken up at the organization's upcoming meeting, reports the Nation (Thailand), but the NGOs are not optimistic that the UN body will make any drastic changes in its mandate and structure.
Jubilee 2000 chairperson Ann Pettifor warned, "It appears that statements by developed countries' governments [at the conference] will be extremely weak and will not address developing countries," AFP notes.
Commenting in an editorial, the Nation says that the developing countries have become increasingly distrustful of the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO, which they accuse of being tools of the developed few in pushing for trade and economic liberalization. UNCTAD has not achieved the same clout as the Bretton Woods institutions, but the forum has of late become a symbol of the developing world in their fight for a share in economic equality.
Realistically, notes the Nation in a separate piece, UNCTAD is in a class of its own vis-à-vis the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO. Its comparative advantage has been and will continue to be as a forum to help reduce gaps of development between the rich and poor. And with the growing sense of doubt among developing countries over the benefits of globalization, UNCTAD's most urgent task is to bridge the gap of perceptions.
Meanwhile, AFP reports that according to preliminary estimates by UNCTAD, global foreign direct investment grew by 25 percent in 1999 to more than $800 billion. Foreign direct investment flows to developing countries increased by 15 percent in 1999 to $198 billion, after stagnating in 1998. Some $91 billion went to developing Asia, of which $40 billion went to China.
UNCTAD said the driving force behind the increases was cross-border mergers and acquisitions, which in the developed world have become the primary mode of entry into foreign markets and which are increasingly important in developing countries.