WTO talks highlight emerging nations’ power

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: countries of the world has grown at an annually averaged rate of 12% between 1995 and 2005, its South-South trade has grown faster, at 17%,” she points out. Although India’s foreign trade has increased by over 270% from 1995 to 2005, its trade with developed countries has grown by only 176% over this period as against the 323% rise in trade with the South, she adds.

On the other hand, RIS in a recent policy brief had quoted a World Bank study saying out of the projected the gains of a successful Doha Round global trade deal of $96 billion, developing countries can garner a share of only $16 billion. “The developing country benefits are just 0.16% of the GDP. In per capita terms, that amounts to $3.13, or less than a penny per day per capita for those in developing countries,” the RIS says.

This mean a poor worker or farmer earning $100 a month would see an increase of just 16 cents in 2015, it says, adding that projected per capita income gains of rich countries were 25 times of that made by developing nations. At the recent talks in Geneva, the US has agreed to commit at the WTO level to bring down their overall trade distorting subsidies to $14.4 billion. But this is more than twice the amount of subsidies they are currently giving to their farmers, which is $7 billion, Kumar points out.RIS also says the total tariff losses in industrial goods for developing countries would amount to $63.4 billion, which is around four times of the projected gains.

But according to Lamy, said a global trade deal would result in reduction of import tariffs across the world by half the amount of what is today. “There would be savings in the order to $150 billion in tariffs,” he had said, highlighting that developing countries would be the beneficiaries of two-third of this amount.

Mehta says that, however, despite insignificant gains, India, Brazil and China would continue to support WTO due to its rules-based system that will help solve international trade disputes.