7:50 AM Dec 11, 1996

WTO SPINS FUDDLE MEDIA, DELEGATES

Singapore 11 Dec (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- Media representatives, local and visiting, trade economic experts and the non-experts were all in a whirl over the 'spin' to which they are being subjected, by the WTO secretariat, and its 'leader' and his agendas.

Aside from the press spokesman's briefings, media personnel have been critical of other official briefings, including that by the WTO Chief Economist, Mr. Richard Blackhurst, who briefed newsmen Tuesday, to argue that the developing countries and the least developed countries among them, were not losers from the Uruguay Round.

But in a question-and-answer brief provided by him in writing, the WTO admitted for the first time (buried on page four of its brief) that the benefits of the Uruguay Round in terms of boosting global GDP would now be in the range of $40 billion to $315 billion.

At end of 1994, when acceptance of the Uruguay Round package by the US Congress seemed in doubt, and there was criticism in other countries about "losers", in a GATT study made public, it was claimed that the benefits would be in the range of $175 to $500 billion, with the latter figure likely in a situation of monopolistic competition, which the GATT secretariat thought was much nearer the world market realities.

These same figures and projections were repeated on behalf of the WTO at UNCTAD meetings, and also at UNCTAD-IX at Midrand in South Africa, in May this year.

Asked about this discrepancy, as well as the slowdown in the world trade growth for a second year in succession (after the Uruguay Round became effective), Blackhurst said that the Uruguay Round results would work themselves in over a period of 10 years and one could not attribute the decline in trade growth to the Uruguay Round, just as the secretariat had not claimed the 10% growth in 1994 to the Uruguay Round either.

In actual fact, the UR agreements came into effect only on 1 January 1995, and the ten percent growth was in the earlier year.

Also, this 'modesty' about the benefits of the Uruguay Round was not much in evidence in 1994 and 1995, when the then WTO Director-General and the secretariat were pronouncing themselves about the benefits and what lay ahead as a result of the Uruguay Round.

Asked also about the slowdown in the trade growth, reported in the WTO's 1996 annual report, released here on Monday, and presented by Ruggiero to the SMC (without mention of the slowdown), Blackhurst said, the report was prepared 'sometime ago' and he could not recall which were the markets where there was low growth of imports and exports.

Coming from the division of the secretariat that had been working on these figures as late as October, this answer strained credulity.

When told that the report itself attributed the slowdown, to the slowdown in output growth in all the principal industrial markets -- North America and Western Europe -- Blackhurst said, "In that case, the slowdown is not a good sign for the developing countries."