May 26, 1998

AFRICA: WTO AT 50, AFRICA NOT CELEBRATING

Geneva, May 20 (IPS/Lewis Machipisa) -- As one African delegate put it, this week's celebrations to mark 50 years of the multilateral trading system should have been declared a private party for rich nations only. 

Of the 14 state leaders who attended the World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial meeting and the 50th anniversary of the multilateral trading system, here this week, only two came from Africa. 

>From the developing world, South Africa and Cote d'Ivoire were joined by Cuba and Brazil. Singapore, whose prime minister was the first to announce he would come stayed away at the last moment, because of the crisis in Indonesia. The rest came from the rich industrialised nations. 

"That African leaders (did) not bother to attend is a big indication of how dissatisfied they are with the events of the past 50 years," noted an African diplomat here. 

The 50th anniversary was originally scheduled for May 20, but reprogrammed for May 18 to suit U.S. president Bill Clinton's packed social diary. This came as no surprise to Nathan Shamuyarira, Zimbabwe's Industry and Commerce minister. 

"For many decades," he said, "the GATT (the WTO's predecessor) has had a legacy of treating developing countries like second class members of a rich men's exclusive club." 

As a result, said the Zimbabwean minister, the GATT based multilateral trading system could not address the difficulties faced by developing countries -- and in many ways often contributed to them. 

Not so, argued Patrick Low, Director of Economic Research in the WTO Secretariat. Conceding that the multilateral trading system still needs to get Africa on board, he still thinks Africa has been its own worst enemy. Low claimed that work done on African economies shows that there is clear correlations between high growth and good trade reforms and a degree of openness of one's economy.

 According to U.S. president Bill Clinton, Africa hasn't much of a choice anyway. "Globalisation is not a policy choice," he told the gathering this week. "It is a fact." 

And while the WTO claims the trading system has contributed to an extraordinary period of economic growth and increased prosperity and trade, Shamuyarira and many others maintain that this is not the point.

The trading system, they say has failed to lift Africa out of its poverty. Thirty-two out of the 53 world's poorest countries are African and the UNDP has calculated that the sub-Saharan countries stand to lose up to $1.2 billion a year from the side effects of trade liberalisation. 

The 48 LDCs represent 12% of the world's population but just 0.4% of world trade (and even this is declining), and receive only 1.8% of FDI in developing countries. 

Undeterred, Low and other WTO officials argue that relative success has a lot to do with policies countries pursue and claim "there is increasing recognition of this in Africa too." 

But conference observers say that while getting Nelson Mandela to Geneva for the event was supposed to reinforce this recognition, it failed. By the end of the meeting, some African delegates were arguing privately that Africa should have celebrated the anniversary by boycotting the entire event. 

For, while its 132-member governments are responsible for 'decision-making' at the WTO, it is the private sector that trades, and more than two-thirds of that trade involves at least one transnational. 

"There is little to celebrate" said development NGO analyst Myriam Vander Stichele. "All over the world people experience that they cannot benefit from a trade system dominated by TNCs." 

The WTO says it has plans in hand for the poorest, and WTO chief Renato Ruggiero says the "time had come for developed nations to look after the LDCs," -- through programmes for market access, capacity building, technical assistance and integration into the global trading system. 

But while the African ministers are ready to thank some WTO members for opening up their markets (up to a point) to LDCs, they also think that unless the debt issue is also resolved, the initiative may peter out. 

Twenty eight of the LDCs have a serious multilateral debt problem.

Their combined debt stock came to 38 billion dollars 1993 according to the United Nations. While this debt represents only two percent of the total external debt outstanding of developing countries, servicing the debt in Africa has been hard work. 

"This situation", lamented Syamukayumbu Syamujaye, Zambia's mines and minerals minister, "poses a constraint on economic growth, and governments' ability to respond to the challenges of poverty reduction." 

Shamuyarira agreed. "As stated in the founding provisions, the paramount objective underlying the establishment of GATT and its successor, WTO, was to raise living standards worldwide. After 50 years of existence, the GATT/WTO system cannot claim to have achieved this objective for many of the developing and especially African countries.