Wto Textile Pact Faces Problems

WTO information director Keith Rockwell said exporting nations would want to see faster implementation of a pact to eliminate the Multi-Fibre Agreement which used to govern the trade.

While there have been no overt violations of the agreement, some of the developing countries believe that the spirit of the agreement has not been, perhaps, adhered to their liking, Rockwell said.

He said many textile producing nations were disappointed at the practice of large industrialised countries of invoking temporary safegaurd measures to protect their own hard-pressed textile and clothing industries.

The issue will probably become the focus of intense discussions during the WTO trade ministers' meeting in Singapore this December, Rockwell added.

Major textile-producing countries include China, Thailand, and the Philippines. The leading importers of textile goods include the US, the European Union and Japan.

The textile and apparel business had a worldwide turnover of $270 billion in 1994 and is a major source of foreign exchange for developing countries. It is a sunset industry in many industrialised nations, but the loss of textile jobs to the Third World is a politically controversial topic in several developed countries. The WTO agreement on textiles requires integration of most of the world textile market by 2005.

The problem is that countries like the US and the European Union have chosen to remove barriers to the most sensitive products only from 2002, during the last stage of integration, the WTO had said. The US, for example, has already published its 10-year liberalisation schedule while leaving integration of 70 per cent of imports almost to the very end of the transition period.

The developing countries like to see more products restricted by trade barriers integrated into the system. That, of course, is politically controversial in the importing countries, Rockwell said.