Deputy Foreign Minister Joško Klisović led Croatia’s delegation at the 10th ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO), held for the first time on the African continent, in Nairobi, Kenya, from 15 to 19 December 2015.
Talks between the WTO members were intense, as expectations differed and starting points weren’t harmonized. The conference, however, managed to adopt six decisions on agriculture, including the most important one – a commitment to abolish export subsidies for farm exports, which has been seriously harming competition and increasing the gap between the rich and the poor. According to the Nairobi agreement, developed WTO members are to cease subsidizing farm exports immediately, developing countries are to do so by 2018 (in some aspects by 2023), while the least-developed member countries received additional time to cut export subsidies.
The second issue was whether the WTO would continue the negotiations on implementing the remaining elements from the 2001 Doha Development Agenda or accept new topics of interest to many of the members (e.g. e-commerce, digital economy etc.). A decision was not reached, which was pointed out in the adopted documents, and the issue remains a priority.
The third important decision concerns specific benefit to least-developed countries, in order to facilitate export to developed and developing countries’ markets.
Also adopted was a plurilateral agreement (54 WTO members) to eliminate tariffs on 201 information technology products (ITA 2), which is extremely important for the dynamic IT sector and included medical devices. The implementation of said agreement will increase revenues by as much as USD 1.3 trillion per year.
In his address at the plenary session, Klisović underlined Croatia’s support to maintaining the central role of the WTO as the multilateral trade system regulator, outlining the advantages that the WTO membership had brought to Croatia in terms of improving the way our economy works, notably in regard to foreign trade. Klisović also congratulated Liberia and Afghanistan for joining the WTO, which now included 164 member countries.
During the Nairobi conference, the EU Foreign Affairs Council held a meeting in the trade configuration in order to adopt the EU’s position on the issues discussed, while numerous NGOs also presented their trade activities (UNCTAD, UNAIDS, ICT et al).