Pascal`s WTO meet this week a gamble

EXIM MATTERS

The Director General of the WTO, Pascal Lamy, has brought together top trade diplomats from about 40 member countries to determine, in negotiations that may last through the week beginning July 21, whether a trade deal can be reached in the near foreseeable future.The meeting comes at a bad time. With food, commodities and oil prices soaring, trade negotiation is the least of the worries of most governments.

The world trade seems to be growing quite well, even without any trade deal. The technicalities of the negotiations have put off most people. Even critics of WTO seem bored with jargons . Few can make out the relevance of trade negotiations when topics such as the global financial crisis, higher interest rates, inflation, housing prices collapse, falling value of US dollar and stock markets crash dominate the headlines.

The Doha Development Round was launched in 2001. The clout of US has diminished significantly. Successive failures of Ministerial meets at Cancun and Hong Kong and any number of mini-Ministerial meets as also the continuing reluctance of rich countries to cut the farm subsidies and recent bans on food exports by some countries have dented the hopes of all the WTO member countries agreeing on anything. The global economic environment has changed quite a bit.

The US President is at the end of his tenure and lacks the