Disciplined trade system vital for sustainable development

Geneva: "A disciplined international trading system for the benefit of development should be the goal for the years following 2015," UNCTAD Secretary-General Mukhisa Kituyi said last week, while the Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Roberto Azevêdo, said that the deep connections between trade and development should serve to provide new impetus to WTO's December 3-6 Bali ministerial meeting being held as part of the long-running Doha round of trade negotiations.

Dr. Kituyi, Azevêdo, and International Trade Centre (ITC) Executive Director Arancha González were addressing UNCTAD's Trade and Development Board on the topic of how the vast power of growing international sales of goods and services can be harnessed to contribute to lasting progress that broadly raises living standards.

Dr. Kituyi said that "the unique, Geneva-based value chain of expertise in trade should be harnessed so that it plays a major role in international efforts to achieve sustainable and inclusive development - in what is being called the post-2015 development agenda."

Dr. Kituyi's participation in extensive discussions at United Nations Headquarters in New York last week on development approaches after 2015 has led him to propose the setting up of a Geneva-based open-ended working group to provide input on

trade's immense potential role for achieving sustainable progress. "It is vital for close links to be established between Geneva's cluster of trade-focused agencies and the development debate taking place in New York," he told the meeting. Many member States welcomed this suggestion.

"We believe in the importance of a multilateral negotiated trading system that is responsive to the needs of developing countries," Dr. Kituyi said.

"But we also understand that there are many challenges. Recent trends in trade, including the removal of tariff barriers, have helped the prospects of developing countries," he said, "but non-tariff barriers have reduced some of the benefits."

"A rules-based multilateral negotiating system is preferable to the current multiplying system of bilateral and regional treaties," Dr. Kituyi said.

"The presence in Geneva of UNCTAD, WTO and ITC provides great opportunities for building synergies between our institutions and mutually reinforcing the trade aspects of the development agenda," he said.