World Trade Organization
UN SUMMIT FOR THE ADOPTION OF THE POST-2015 DEVELOPMENT AGENDA
INTERACTIVE DIALOGUE 1 – ENDING POVERTY AND HUNGER, 25 SEPTEMBER 2015
STATEMENT BY MR ROBERTO AZEVÊDO, DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION
Thank you Mr Chairman.
I am pleased to join you today, and to pledge that the WTO will play its full role in delivering the Sustainable Development Goals.
By boosting economic growth, trade was a catalyst for reaching the Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty in half – well ahead of this year's deadline.
The new SDGs underline this point. To take a few examples:
Goal 2 looks at reforming agricultural markets to end hunger – which is a key element of our agenda at the WTO.
Goal 3 reaffirms the flexibilities offered by WTO's rules on intellectual property to protect public health.
Goal 8 calls for increased support for the poorest countries through the WTO's Aid for Trade initiative.
Goal 14 calls for action on fisheries subsidies to tackle overcapacity and overfishing, which again is an important element of our work.
And Goal 17 calls for the conclusion of negotiations on the WTO's Doha Development Agenda.
At present many factors, such as poor infrastructure, lack of essential services, gender discrimination, conflict, rural isolation and high trading costs obstruct people's capacity to join trading flows. We need to remove those barriers.
And here we have two main tasks:
First, we have to help build communities' capacity to trade.
Just throwing open markets won't do the job. We have to give people the tools and the skills that they need to compete.
To date more than 245 billion dollars have been disbursed through the WTO’s Aid for Trade programme.
Research has found that one dollar invested in Aid-for-Trade results in nearly 8 dollars of exports from developing countries in general – and in 20 dollars of exports for the poorest countries.
Our second task must be to reform trade rules to make them fairer, more sustainable, and more pro-development.
This means implementing the decisions that WTO members took at our Ministerial Conference in Bali in 2013. This includes:
steps on Agriculture, including on food security,
a package of decisions for LDCs,
and the Trade Facilitation Agreement.
The Trade Facilitation Agreement could cut the cost of trade by up to 15% in developing countries and create 18 million developing country jobs.
And there are other potentially significant benefits. In Africa, for example, only 5% of imported food staples are bought from other African countries. Lowering intra-regional trade barriers would cut the cost of intra-African trade, providing opportunities for poor farmers to increase their income while at the same time helping to improve food security.
The WTO's 10th Ministerial will be held in Nairobi this December. It will be the first time such a Conference has ever been held in Africa, and so it must deliver for Africa – and for development.
Negotiations have been tough in Geneva, especially in some key areas. But I sense that a set of pro-development deliverables in Nairobi is within reach.
A successful Nairobi conference would be the biggest contribution the WTO could make to advancing the issues we are discussing here today.
Thank you.
INTERACTIVE DIALOGUE 1 – ENDING POVERTY AND HUNGER, 25 SEPTEMBER 2015
STATEMENT BY MR ROBERTO AZEVÊDO, DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION
Thank you Mr Chairman.
I am pleased to join you today, and to pledge that the WTO will play its full role in delivering the Sustainable Development Goals.
By boosting economic growth, trade was a catalyst for reaching the Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty in half – well ahead of this year's deadline.
The new SDGs underline this point. To take a few examples:
Goal 2 looks at reforming agricultural markets to end hunger – which is a key element of our agenda at the WTO.
Goal 3 reaffirms the flexibilities offered by WTO's rules on intellectual property to protect public health.
Goal 8 calls for increased support for the poorest countries through the WTO's Aid for Trade initiative.
Goal 14 calls for action on fisheries subsidies to tackle overcapacity and overfishing, which again is an important element of our work.
And Goal 17 calls for the conclusion of negotiations on the WTO's Doha Development Agenda.
At present many factors, such as poor infrastructure, lack of essential services, gender discrimination, conflict, rural isolation and high trading costs obstruct people's capacity to join trading flows. We need to remove those barriers.
And here we have two main tasks:
First, we have to help build communities' capacity to trade.
Just throwing open markets won't do the job. We have to give people the tools and the skills that they need to compete.
To date more than 245 billion dollars have been disbursed through the WTO’s Aid for Trade programme.
Research has found that one dollar invested in Aid-for-Trade results in nearly 8 dollars of exports from developing countries in general – and in 20 dollars of exports for the poorest countries.
Our second task must be to reform trade rules to make them fairer, more sustainable, and more pro-development.
This means implementing the decisions that WTO members took at our Ministerial Conference in Bali in 2013. This includes:
steps on Agriculture, including on food security,
a package of decisions for LDCs,
and the Trade Facilitation Agreement.
The Trade Facilitation Agreement could cut the cost of trade by up to 15% in developing countries and create 18 million developing country jobs.
And there are other potentially significant benefits. In Africa, for example, only 5% of imported food staples are bought from other African countries. Lowering intra-regional trade barriers would cut the cost of intra-African trade, providing opportunities for poor farmers to increase their income while at the same time helping to improve food security.
The WTO's 10th Ministerial will be held in Nairobi this December. It will be the first time such a Conference has ever been held in Africa, and so it must deliver for Africa – and for development.
Negotiations have been tough in Geneva, especially in some key areas. But I sense that a set of pro-development deliverables in Nairobi is within reach.
A successful Nairobi conference would be the biggest contribution the WTO could make to advancing the issues we are discussing here today.
Thank you.
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