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http://www.bangladesh-web.com/news/view.php?hidDate=2005-08-11&hidType=BAE&hidRecord=0000000000000000056073

Dhaka places 13-point agenda for WTO summit

August 11 2005

Bangladesh has advanced a 13-point agenda of action to be taken up by the forthcoming Hong Kong summit of WTO with a view to promoting the legitimate trade interest of the LDC group, reports BSS.

These points are already part of the Livingstone Declaration that the commerce ministers of the LDC group adopted in their preparatory meeting for the WTO summit held in Zambia on June 25 and 26.

The Hong Kong summit is slated for December 13-18.

Commerce minister Altaf Hossain Chowdhury took those points to the Dalian mini summit in China last month, attended by some select group of countries comprising the LDCs and the developing and the developed countries to reach a consensus on major issues.

Bangladesh is attending all these meetings as member of a core group in efforts to strike a deal on the outcome of the Hong Kong summit to save it from failures like that occurred during the last WTO summit in Cancun in September 2003, and the previous one held at Seattle.

The 13-point agenda of action advanced by Bangladesh is now the common property of the LDC group as a whole. It called for removal of all restrictions to allow duty free and quota free access for exports from the poor nations to the market of the developed nations.

Dhaka is pressing for free movement of labour from the LDCs to the rich nations. It is also asking them to spare all the least developed countries from taking reduction commitments in different tariff and other regulatory regimes, which may seriously affect the LDCs in the short run.

“We are also asking for trade remedial measures and a compensatory mechanism to be in place against losses resulting from trade erosion following trade liberalisation under the WTO rules of business,” said an official.

He said Bangladesh is further demanding preferential, compensatory and transitional measures against lifting of subsidies on agricultural products. There is also the urgent need for making available technical support to the least developed countries in order to diversify their export base.

The LDCs are further demanding commitment that the other countries will not apply anti-dumping measures and safeguard clause against their exports. They say, the poor countries should also be spared from past debts.

They want assistance towards achieving the millennium development goals and also technical supports in area of capacity building to fulfil the sanitary and semi-sanitary requirements for some categories of exports to the market of the developed countries.

The poor nations should also benefit from flexibility in fixing the bound tariff lines. They should have the flexibility in case of adopting trade facilitation measures for not entering into any commitment beyond their capacity in terms of support from administrative and institutional backing.

The LDCs are also demanding supply of cheaper life saving drugs to those of their members which are not having the capacity to produce such drugs under the treaty on intellectual property rights.

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