South Africa is confident that the majority of member countries of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) will reaffirm the global body’s development agenda at this week’s Ministerial conference in Geneva.

“I think we know [this] already from the preparatory meetings with the African group, [and] the African, Caribbean and Pacific group,” South African Trade and Industry Minister Dr Rob Davies told Engineering News Online, talking from Geneva on Wednesday. “We’re going to meet with the BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] later on.”

This agenda has come under pressure from some developed countries as a consequence of the current financial and economic crisis. “What we’re going to be doing is having a regular Ministerial meeting, a discussion on ‘where to now for the WTO?’,” he reported. “The discussion is very important. It is raising some very fundamental issues.”

One of these issues is a proposal, from some developed countries, led by the US, that the difference in WTO commitments between the developed and the larger emerging economy countries be eliminated or, at least, significantly reduced. “Although the immediate target is China, South Africa is in this category,” explained Davies. If implemented, such a change would require South Africa to make significant cuts in its nonagricultural tariffs, such as its industrial tariffs.

In addition, a number of developed countries want to move ahead with “plurilateral processes” amongst themselves on what are known as “twenty-first century issues” such as competition policy, procurement and investment rules, and disregard the development agenda. “We [developing countries] are not prepared to give them a mandate to put aside development issues for some other agenda,” assured Davies.

Another key issue is protectionism. The Group of 20 leading developed and emerging economies has agreed that the current crisis will not lead to a return to protectionism, as happened during the Great Depression in the 1930s.

But what is meant by protectionism? “Our view is that protectionism means breaking the [WTO] rules,” he stated. However, some developed countries are trying to use this as an issue to undermine one of the benefits that emerging and developing countries enjoy in the WTO. The global agency recognises two types of tariff rates – bound and applied. A country cannot exceed a bound rate, but can have applied rates (the levels of tariffs actually imposed) that are lower than the bound rates. If these applied rates are lower than the bound rates, the applied tariffs can be increased.

The permissible space between bound and applied rates for developed countries is, however, much less than it is for emerging and developing countries. “Some of them [developed countries] feel that developing countries shouldn’t use this space [that is, legally raise their applied tariffs],” reported Davies. “But developed countries have other options developing countries don’t. We’re saying that there has been built into the [WTO] process [the recognition] that developing countries need flexibility.”