South Centre briefs senior developing country officials from trade and commerce ministry

Mr. Offah Obale and Ms. Wase Musonge today briefed around 12 senior officials from trade and commerce ministries from several developing countries to acquaint them with complex multilateral trade workings. These senior officials were visiting the South Centre as a part of AITIC’s capacity-building programmes, namely the Official Fellowship and Professional Training Programme.

Mr. Offah provided them with an overview of the South Centre activities, including those related to trade for development programme, namely WTO and EPA negotiations. This was complemented by Ms. Musonge who touched upon several other issues including regional issues concerning trade, migration and employment.

Over the years, this briefing has emerged as a joint collaboration between the South Centre and AITIC.

EPA General Exceptions undermine WTO negotiations on commodities

Peter Lunenborg, Trade for Development Programme, South Centre, has his piece "EPA General Exceptions undermine WTO negotiations on commodities" published in the Trade Negotiations Insights. Volume 8, Number 2, March 2009.

The article is available from: http://ictsd.net/i/news/tni/42025/

South Centre organises workshop on EPAs in Angola

The Trade for Development Programme, South Centre is organising a workshop on EPAs on 4 -5 March 2009 in collaboration with Ministry of Trade, Angola. The resource person include Ms. Aileen Kwa, Coordinator, and Mr. Offah Obale, Programme Officer, Trade for Development Programme. The keynote address is to be delivered by Minister of Trade, Angola.

More information at: http://www.southcentre.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=974&Itemid=77

Working Lunch on Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs)

The Trade for Development Programme organised an information exchange and brainstorming meeting on the ongoing EU - ACP EPA negotiations today (5 February) at the South Centre.

The meeting provided an update on where African countries and their sub regions are in the EPA/FTA negotiations; how the processes will unfold in the coming months and how the Centre can better support them.

The meeting was chaired by Mr. Aileen Kwa, Coordinator, Trade for Development Programme, South Centre.

EPA scenario building workshop for West African countries

Ms. Wase Musonge, Trade for Development Programme, South Centre participated in the EPA scenario building workshop for West African countries organised by the
Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) in Benin from 19 -23 January 2009. Almost 30 participants attended the training programme.

Training on EPAs/ FTAs for Developing Country Negotiators in Brussels

On 4 -5 December 2008, the Trade for Development Programme of the South Centre organised a training programme on EPAs/ FTAs for Developing Country Negotiators in Brussels.

Over 30 colleagues from different regions participated in this programme. The purpose of this meeting was to bring a small group of like minded countries together to discuss key issues that these countries are likely to agree on. The intention is that these countries will then be able to strengthen each other in their respective negotiations by presenting the same arguments to the EU in their FTA negotiations. It is also hoped that these countries will be able to encourage other countries within their regions to take more progressive positions in the FTA negotiations.

Some of the issues covered included Market Access Issues – Agriculture and Industrial Products; Services and Investment Liberalisation: What has been proposed and what are the development challenges?; Intellectual Property – Going Beyond TRIPS: What Implications?; Competition Provisions and Trade Agreements; and Government Procurement and Trade Agreements among others.

Is there any Development Agenda left in the Doha Development Round?

On 5 December, the South Centre organised an invitation-only brainstorming discussion on the Development content of the Doha Round at the World Trade Organisation.

Leading the discussions were H.E. Mme Maria Nzomo, Ambassador, Permanent Mission of Kenya to the WTO and Dr. Yash Tandon, Executive Director, South Centre.

Some of questions of interest to developing countries were taken up during the presentations and subsequent discussions, namely: Is the idea of liberalization as the golden bullet to development still valid?, Is the Doha Round simply about technical coefficients and numbers or are there broader development issues at stake? Are the processes of the proposed mini-Ministerial democratic and transparent?

Building of A Common Platform Between Developing Countries

On 4-5 December 2008, the South Centre organized a training workshop on EPAs/FTAs for developing country negotiators in Brussels.

The workshop was organized by the Trade for Development Programme of the South Centre.

Workshop agenda can be downloaded from here.

Capacity Building of Parliamentarians from Eastern and Southern Africa on EPAs

Ms. Luisa Rodriguez, Programme Officer, Trade for Development Programme gave a presentation on "Food Security and EPAs" at a workshop organized by Agency for Cooperation and Research in Development (ACORD) in Kenya to build the capacity of parliamentarians on EPA-related issues.

The workshop was held on 14 -15 November 2008 in Nairobi.

South Centre @ Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Meeting on an African EPA Template - Addis Ababa

The South Centre was invited to an Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) meeting on EPAs entitled ‘African Workshop on Economic Partnership Agreements – the benefits of the EPAs: Taking Stock of the Interim Agreements to ensure African Countries Reap the Benefits of the EPAs’

The meeting took place on 8 – 10 October 2008 in Addis Ababa. Those attending the meeting included many government negotiators based in capitals but also in Brussels.

The meeting was essentially an attempt to respond to an African Heads of States request for a template for Africa in the EPA negotiations. As such, the ECA invited a number of experts to address various issues raised in the interim EPA agreements, and also to provide ideas and comments in the discussions on an African EPA template.

The presentations made by the South Centre by Ms. Aileen Kwa and Mr. Offah Obale at the workshop are available from: http://www.southcentre.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=858&Itemid=77

US Farm Bill: Agriculture-related policy making in the US

On 23 September, South Centre through its trade for development programme organized jointly with ForumDemocracy, an NGO-Think tank based in Washington DC, a meeting with some agriculture and dispute settlement delegations on agriculture-related policy making in the US.

The 2 experts Robert Stumberg and Peter Riggs made a presentation on two aspects of the Farm Bill:

1. New provisions in the 2008 U.S. Farm Bill that should be analyzed in the context of WTO compatibility and WTO negotiations
2. What's already been adjudicated on cotton?

Over 20 delegates participated in the meeting which covered several topics, including among others, key components and sectors protected under the Farm Bill and the link between negotiations on reduction of subsidies and current US support levels.

Ms. Aileen Kwa, Coordinator of the Trade for Development Programme chaired the meeting.

EPAs and Competition Policy

Fostering Trade through Public-Private Dialogue

Mr. Darlan F. Marti, Programme Officer, Trade for Development Programme, South Centre made a presentation on EPAs and Competition Policy in the Public Private Dialogue for the East and Southern African countries, focusing on the business implications of negotiations on Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union and issues relating to regional integration.

The Dialogue was organized by the International Trade Centre (ITC), in partnership with the Commonwealth Secretariat in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 9-10 September 2008. This regional dialogue encompasses the participation of the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) Community i.e.Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Seychelles, Sudan, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Pan-African Parliament Session and SADC EPA Services Workshop

Mr. Offah Obale and Mr. Darlan F. Marti, Programme Officer, Trade for Development Programme, South Centre participated in the the SADC EPA services workshop and the Pan-African Parliament session from August 25-28.

The Pan-African Parliament (PAP) requested the South Centre to prepare and present two papers on "The Impact of Free Trade Agreements in National Policy Space and Development Prorities - Case of The Economic Partnership Agreements". The tiltle of the of the papers presented by the South Centre during the session were: What Are the EPAs, What Consequences Might They Have and Where Do They Stand by Darlan Marti, and Liberalisation of African Services Markets in the EPAs by Offah Obale.

Formulation of West Africa's EPA market access offer to the EU

Mr. Darlan Marti, Programme Officer, Trade for Development Programme participated in workshop organized by the commission and secretariat of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and West Africa's Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) on 4 and 5 August 2008 in Dakar, Senegal for the validation of a regional list of sensitive products with a view to preparing the West Africa's EPA market access offer to the EU.

The workshop built upon the work of national committees entrusted with the identification of agricultural and manufacturing sensitive products in West Africa's member states.

The South Centre and its work to support the region in the topics of the workshop was acknowledged by the ECOWAS' Commissioner of Trade during the opening ceremony.

Preparotory meeting for the WTO mini-ministerial

Prior to the beginning of the WTO mini-ministerial meeting on the modalities for the finalization of the Doha Round of negotiations, the South Centre organized a working lunch meeting on Tuesday 15 July 2008.

The objective of the meeting was to provide the South Centre's analysis of the revised agriculture text (including the proposals on the SSM) and the NAMA negotiations or text and also to look at the implications of the US Farm Bill in relation to the Doha mandate. The meeting was chaired by Ms. Aileen Kwa, Coordinator of the Trade for Development Programme, South Centre.

South Centre participates in Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs organized seminar on International Seminar on Trade and Climate Change

Darlan Marti, Programme Officer, Trade for Development Programme, participated in the International Seminar on Trade and Climate Change organised by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in collaboration with IISD and ICTSD in Copenhagen from 18-20 June 2008.

South-North Dialogue of Food and Energy Security opens in Geneva, 17 June 2008

South Centre and the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Indonesia in Geneva organized this joint event to assess the underlying causes and policy dilemmas related to energy security, food security and livelihood security and multilateral responses required to correct the systemic issues.

H.E I Gusti Agung Wesaka Puja, Charge d'Affairs, Permanent Mission of Indonesia to Geneva and Dr. Yash Tandon, Executive Director of the South Centre provided the welcome address. Ambassador Puja stressed the need for multilateral responses to multidimensional crisis such as that of food security while Dr. Tandon laid out the systemic issues underlying food crisis and which requires a rethinking of existing development strategies.

Opening remarks were made by Mrs. Lakshmi Puri, Acting Deputy Secretary General of UNCTAD and by H.E Ambassador Juan Antonio Fernandez Ambassador of Cuba to the UN. Mrs Puri described the food crisis as an urgent wake up call in the area of development while Ambassador Antonio Fernandez illustrated the negative impact on the realization of the right to food of the worsening of the world food crisis, caused inter alia by the soaring food prices’.

Session 1: Understanding the Extent of the Problem

Mr. Josef Schmidhuber from Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reminded the audience that food prices will remain high as long as oil prices remain high.

Mr. Mbaye Ndiaye from Permanent Mission of Senegal stressed that agriculture should be high in the economic agenda at the national and intenational level and adequate resources should be mobilized to help developing countries, especially the LDCs.

Ms. Umpika Poonachit, Permanent Mission of Thailand shared the policy responses undertaken by Thailand - as a rice exporting, middle-income developing country, to tackle the food security issue.

Section 2: Causes and Possible Solutions

Ms. Teresa Cavero (Oxfam) explained how decades of wrong policy prescriptions to developing countries and forced liberalization have led to price crisis. Developing countries were forced to let agriculture fall apart and then forced to open their markets which were flooded with cheap imports. Unregulated capital and commodity markets and push towards biofuels has fueled food crisis.

Over 80 people are participating in the event from Missions to the UN of countries of the North and South in Geneva, NGOs and other development agencies.

Working Lunch on WTO Agriculture and NAMA Negotiations

Following the release in May 2008 of revised versions of the draft modalities texts for agricultural and NAMA WTO negotiations, the South Centre's Trade for Development Programme (TDP) drafted comments to both the texts.

On 16th June 2008, it organized a working lunch on WTO Agriculture and NAMA Negotiations to facilitate developing country delegations to analyse and respond to both the texts. Mr. Darlan Fonseca Marti and Ms. Luisa Rodriguez, Programme Officers, TDP, South Centre chaired the meeting.

South Centre in Media (Business Daily): Regional trade helps fight hunger

May 28, 2008: Regional trade agreements could not only serve to protect farmers in developing countries but could also be used for the swift distribution of food aid from neighbouring countries in times of famine.

Luisa Bernal, coordinator of the trade development programme at the South Centre in Geneva, made these remarks last week in an interview with IPS about the links between commodity dependence and development.

South Centre, together with ActionAid, recently concluded a report revealing how a few large players have secured most of the agricultural commodity business for themselves. South Centre is an intergovernmental organisation working at enhancing South-South cooperation.

Read complete news article at: http://www.bdafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7877&Itemid=5822

South Centre provides support to São Tomé and Príncipe the context of the Economic Partnership Agreement negotiations

Mr. Darlan F. Marti, Programme Officer, Trade for Development Programme provided support to São Tomé and Príncipe for the preparation of their market access offers on goods and services for submission to the European Union in the context of the Economic Partnership Agreement negotiations from 15 May to 22 May.