Smith: Belize will not trade aid for better tariff deals
The Belize delegation has left the World Trade Organization talks in Hong Kong, but reports are that the round, while not ending in collapse like previous meetings in Seattle and Cancun, has produced largely “insubstantial results.” In his final presentation to the world’s leaders, Belize’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Godfrey Smith puts the blame for the failure to determine new trade agreements, like tariff arrangements for bananas and sugar, squarely on the shoulders of the more developed countries.
Godfrey Smith, Min. of Foreign Affairs
?Let it therefore never be said that the failure in Hong Kong should lie at our doorstep. It would perhaps have been more appropriate Madam Chair if rather than the symbolical magic wand that was introduced at the inaugural session, a club has been raised over our heads instead, for we are being coerced into accepting trading outcomes that are inimical to our national interests. The developed countries refusal to squarely address the development issues also exposes the hypocrisy of their so-called recommitment to the Millennium Development Goals undertaken at the United Nations Summit last September. How can we be expected to make any genuine progress toward elimination of poverty if our means of livelihood are being systematically dismantled? Madam Chair, we know that aid is the prerequisite for enhancing our trading capacity. We have been insisting on it for years, but have been receiving mostly promises of aid. You will understand our scepticism therefore if we view the latest Aid for Trade package as a thinly veiled attempt to buy us out, or even more cynically, to divide us by triggering a race for aid. Let us know the amount of the aid, the allocation mechanism, its duration, and how it will be administered among us. But most importantly, any Aid for Trade initiative must ensure that small vulnerable preference dependent members, like Belize, which are not LDC, are also major beneficiaries.?
The ministers have now set a deadline of April 2006 to complete the trade agreements. Belize participated in the W.T.O. talks in Hong Kong along with representatives from more than one hundred and forty-nine other countries. Smith’s speech will air in its entirety immediately following this newscast.
