The Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Alan Kyerematen has urged members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to use their collective strength to restore hope and confidence in the multilateral trading system.
He noted that the combined impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict on free trade has been so strong that the role and mandate of the WTO are being seriously questioned now.
Mr Kyerematen, who was delivering an address on Sunday (June 12, 2022) at the first plenary session of the 12th Ministerial Conference of the WTO in Geneva, therefore called for reforms within the organization to enable it to work better.
The Ministerial Conference is the highest decision-making body of the WTO. It meets every two years, bringing together all members of the WTO, countries or customs unions to take decisions on all matters under multilateral trade agreements.
He expressed concern that over the last 20 years the organization had been preoccupied with the same issues that have been tabled before it, noting that “this clearly points to the need for serious structural reforms in the WTO”.
“As members, we will need to take a critical look at the architecture of negotiations. Ministerial conferences are not supposed to be an extension of negotiations which are the responsibility of our technical teams. As ministers, when we gather at these conferences, we do so to make concrete decisions”, he pointed out.
Mr Kyerematen therefore, appealed to members of the session to “rise above the interests of our individual countries, to accommodate flexibilities which will unlock otherwise difficult bargaining positions. Secondly, the WTO Secretariat must in between Ministerial Conferences, undertake extensive political engagements with our capitals to ensure that matters to be addressed in Ministerial meetings have the buy-in of the political leadership of member-states before we convene at the Ministerial Conference.”
In addition to the need for structural reforms in the WTO, the Trade and Industry minister noted that it would be a tragedy of history for the ministers to leave the conference without securing concrete outcomes which will anchor the expectations of developing and least developed countries in using trade to help reboot their economies.
He said “whilst we advance our own interests as developing countries, we must also ensure fair and balanced outcomes for developed-country members. “
He proposed that the conference focuses on granting a waiver to empower members to produce vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics for especially developing and least developing-country members, with a view to alleviating their suffering, and expediting the global recovery process.
Mr Kyeremateng disclosed that Ghana was in the process of establishing a Vaccine Manufacturing plant and a National Vaccine Institute to facilitate the production of vaccines.
Noting the negative effects of domestic support measures of some developed-country members which have serious implications for agricultural development and rural livelihood improvement, he called for steps to correct the existing distortions and systemic imbalances in agriculture trade, particularly through disciplines on domestic support.
He pledged Ghana’s support for the draft Ministerial Decision on Food insecurity in Net Food Importing Developing Countries (NFIDCs) and LDCs and call on all WTO Members to adopt this decision.
The minister said Ghana supports the call for the reinstitution of a fully functional dispute settlement mechanism, including the appellate body, to re-establish trust, security and predictability in the WTO.
