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(Date Posted:27/05/2008 13:17:58)
Trade constitutes an important vehicle to achieve sustainable growth and remains an essential component to fight poverty and achieve the objectives of the Millennium Development Goals. The Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Mr. A. P. Neewoor, made this statement this morning at the launching ceremony of a five-day Regional Intensive Course on Trade Negotiations Skills for English-Speaking African Countries, organised by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) at Le Meridien hotel, Pointe aux Piments. The course is designed to allow participants to acquire good skills to enable them negotiate for their Governments in sub-regional, regional and multilateral negotiations. The resource person for the training course is Dr. Dickson Yeboah, Counsellor at the Institute for Training and Cooperation, WTO. In his speech, Mr. Neewoor pointed out that the challenge of developing countries is not just to increase their share in world trade but also to shape multilateral trade rules that condition the international trading environment. He recalled that a more equitable sharing of the gains from trade would emanate from a rule-based trading system which provides members opportunities to engage constructively in trade negotiations. "By participating in the WTO negotiations, developing countries want to put all their weight in rectifying the inequities and imbalances that have accentuated in the multilateral trading system over the last five decades", he said. According to the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, participants should be able to analyse and take position on issues such as liberalisation of tropical products, sensitive products, special products, the safeguard mechanism and trade preferences which are particularly important for the African region. He further underlined that the need for negotiating skills is critically felt among African countries at a time when a wide range of issues have to be tackled and when negotiations are ongoing at the level of the WTO, Economic Partnership Agreement, COMESA and SADC trade regimes. For his part Dr. Yeboah, said that as WTO Member States have a stake in the multilateral trading system, adding that an effective multilateral trading system should give governments the capacity to keep their own domestic markets open or liberalise them further according to their trade, financial and development needs.
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