Dr Apraku on WTO and African countries

Dr Kofi Konadu Apraku, Minister of Trade and Industry on Sunday complained that Ghana and some other African countries had not been able to enjoy the benefits of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) trading system because of problems they had with the implementation of the Uruguay Round (UR) of negotiations.

He said: "We need solutions to the problems associated with UR. We have been labouring to fulfil our obligations, but we have not got any where because of our weak capacity and supply-side constraints."

Dr Apraku, who is leading Ghana's delegation to the Fourth Ministerial Conference of WTO in Doha, Qatar, was speaking at the plenary session.

He said the primary responsibility for addressing these problems was that of Ghana and other disadvantaged countries but "we expect the WTO to help solve frontally those within its ambit."

There was the need for a strong collaboration in the WTOs capacity-building activities with institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the regional development banks under the coherence mandate.

The Minister stressed that it was logical and practical rather than tactical that "we advocate for a slimmer work programme, which would not overtax our limited capacity. We need to avoid overloading the work programme with issues of doubtful relevance to the WTO's mandate and adopt a manageable agenda."

He said the optimistic assessments and the promise of improvement in market access for developing countries following the round had been belied by the reality.

Dr Apraku said that there was the need for the faithful implementation of Special and Differential (S&D) provisions at the conference, to ensure that developing countries enjoyed the benefits in concrete terms. There was, therefore, an urgent need to address these problems in order to make WTO really development-oriented.

He said actions, "we expect, include the translation of S&D provisions into explicit legally-binding obligations; review of the agreement on subsidies and Countervailing Measures to take into account specific problems and requirement of African countries; measures for the realisation of technology transfer objectives envisaged in TRIPS Agreement and the effective implementation of Article four of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) for building services capacity and access to technology distribution channels.

Dr Apraku pointed out that in the light of current developments, WTO members should affirm the understanding that no provision of the TRIPS Agreement should stand in the way of members right to promote public health.

There was the need to remove tariff peaks and escalation, relax the application of stringent sanitary measures that restrict African exports.

He said the implementation of the Agreement on Agriculture should be geared towards meeting core development concerns, such as food security, poverty reduction, rural development and the implementation of special measures in favour of the least developed countries and the net-food importing developing countries.

The Minister said unless, "we are assisted to be able to increase our export capacity, pressure on us to further open our markets will lead to a situation where there will be no resources available to us to import, even though our markets remain open," adding, "it is our export earnings which sustain our import capacity."

Among the six-member Ghanaian delegation were Dr Matthew Kwaku Antwi, Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture and Mr William Kofi Larbi, Deputy Director of the Ministry of Trade and Industry.