Wto Calls Meeting Of Poorest Nations

The announcement followed a meeting between the WTOs director-general Renato Ruggiero and Rubens Ricupero, Secretary-General of the United Nations trade and development agency Unctad, which is helping set up the gathering.

The WTO said the gathering would be held in Geneva from November 13-15.

At a summit of the Group of Seven leading industrial powers in Lyon in June Ruggiero called on industrialised countries and richer emerging economies to shape a plan of action on trade concessions to help prevent the 48 sinking deeper into poverty.

He urged the better off members of the 124-state WTO to commit themselves to removing tariffs and lowering other barriers on a range of exports from the poorest, know as the least-developed countries or LDCs.

 

Although the response has been generally cool, especially from the United States, Ruggiero has made clear he will press the action plan to try to get agreement formalised at the WTOs first ministerial meeting in Singapore in December.

Last month he returned to the charge when he told the WTOs own Committee on Trade and Development that the global trading community had a duty to prevent further marginalisation of the LDCs, most of whom are in Africa.

And last week he told Unctads governing board that conditions of poverty in the LDCs were unsustainable in a world where economic, environmental and demographic problems necessarily have a global effect.

LDCs are defined by the UN as countries where per capita in-come is less than $600, a category which includes several Asian countries like Bangladesh, Afghanistan and island states in the Pacific.Total LDC population is more than 550 million.

In 1995, according to UNCTAD, their share of world trade despite efforts to liberalise their economies was less than 0.4 per cent. And they received only two per cent of the global flow of foreign direct investment (FDI), a major motor of growth.

Unctad, now working increasingly closely with the WTO which is not part of the U.N. system, has for years promoted the cause of the LDCs and itself has been focussing debate on their plight at the current meeting of its board.