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African Parliamentarians Demand Ministers to Safeguard Local Markets and
Peoples’ Livelihoods at Hong Kong WTO Ministerial
Arusha, Tanzania, 22 November 2005.
Ministers from the African Union will be gathering in Arusha 23-24th November
to discuss their positions for the coming WTO Ministerial in Hong Kong (13 –
18 December 2005). A group of Eastern and Southern African Parliamentarians
attended a Roundtable in Arusha which was organized by Southern and Eastern
African Trade Information and Negotiations Institute (SEATINI) and Institute
for Global Dialogue (IGD). Parliamentarians call on Ministers to keep
development – livelihoods and employment – high on the agenda.
Agriculture:
The US and EU are still heavily subsidizing their own farmers to overproduce
and dump on the African market. The “offers” on the table from these major
trading partners do not amount to real cuts in subsidies.
Sheila Kawamara, Member of the East African Legislative Assembly comments:
“The African Ministers should remain firm. They are representing the majority
of the world’s poor and the livelihoods of people are at stake. Our
agricultural sector is being threatened by the US and EU. These countries are
hood-winking us into a policy that is going to further destroy the
livelihoods of our farmers in Africa. The dumping will flood our African
markets and cause rural unemployment, instability and inevitably, conflict.
“As African parliamentarians, we are calling upon our Ministers that Africa
should not be forced to cut our tariffs on agriculture until the US and EU
have substantially eliminated their trade distorting supports which are still
in place”.
Services:
Africa’s priority is to build the capacity of our local suppliers. African
Ministers must maintain our stand and insist on retaining the flexibilities
in the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The EU and US are
currently pushing for aggressive liberalisation of Africa’s services sectors.
Abdirahin Abdi of the East African Legislative Assembly comments,
“Our ministers must not be coerced to undertake a formula to open up our
services sectors or to enter into plurilateral or sectoral negotiations. This
will lead to undue competition in our local markets from the already
developed international service providers. If we are forced to open up
prematurely, foreign service providers will suffocate our young and growing
services industries.”
Non-agriculture Market Access (NAMA)
Countries that have developed have one time closed their markets until they
have become competitive. African Ministers must ensure that local industries
are given ample protection to develop the industrial sector to a level where
they are more competitive on the world market. The proposed tariff cuts and
bindings in the WTO NAMA negotiations, pushed by US and EU, to bring tariff
levels down to 10 – 27% are a tool that will suffocate industrial development
in Africa.
Aid for Trade
The rich countries are coming to Hong Kong with packages of aid to “persuade”
our Ministers to agree to an agenda that will allow foreign companies to take
over our agricultural, services and industrial markets.
According to Sheila Kawamara, “We do not want aid for trade, we want aid for
production, to boost our local supply capacities. But if the donors are
genuine, they will not be mixing this agenda up with the WTO agenda in Hong
Kong. By handing out aid on the one hand, and making liberalisation demands
on the other, aid becomes a tool of coercion”.
Sisa Njikelana, Member of Parliament from South Africa “Whilst we recognize
and applaud the good work by our Ministers hitherto, further efforts must be
made to ensure that active participation of both civil society and
parliamentarians is integrated into the WTO process. We want a process that
allows for sufficient oversight and public participation. It therefore
becomes imperative that African countries invest in the strategic empowerment
of parliamentarians and civil society in order for us to participate
meaningfully.
“We call upon African Union ministers to maintain a high level of unity and
solidarity before and during the Hong Kong Ministerial in order to safeguard
the interests of the majority of poor people in Africa.”
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