Nicolas Stern, who is also the Bank's senior vice-president, said yesterday at the ongoing annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) that the US, European Union (EU) and Japan should vie with one another to carry out this "simple" and landmark initiative. Measures to enable the poor to share benefits of rapid integration of the global economy are among the subjects being discussed by government and corporate leaders at WEF meeting.

"Offering poor nations duty-free access to markets of rich countries would be a good first step but only a start," Mr Stern said, adding that high-income economies should also remove existing non-tariff barriers and avoid imposing new ones. Changes in product standards was cited as one example. A zero-duty regime for all products from LDCs will appeal to many people in rich countries as fair thing to do, he said.

Though a small number of people in high-income countries would face adjustment costs, Mr Stern said a vast majority of people in the poor countries would benefit from wider choices and lower prices.

Mr Stern said by scrapping all tariff barriers to imports from the poorest countries, rich economies would signal their determination to dismantle other barriers like quota, spurious anti-dumping measures, subsidies to domestic producers and imposition of capricious product standards.

The remaining barriers in rich economies to imports from developing nations meant that the gains that poor countries experienced when they liberalised their trade regimes were smaller than would otherwise be the case, Mr Stern said.

He said the recent World Bank research found that tariff and non-tariff barriers imposed by high income countries, together with agricultural subsidies, cost developing countries much more in lost export opportunities than the approximately $50 billion that they receive in foreign aid each year. Mr Stern regretted that too often industrialised economies discourage imports of precisely those products that developing nations can produce more competitively. Tariffs on labour-intensive manufactured goods such as textiles, clothing and footwear ranged from 15-30 per cent, he said.

(PTI)