Home »Business and Economy » Pakistan » Rich states urged to cut tariffs, stop subsidies: Shaukat meets G-20 ministers

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  • Sep 10th, 2005
  • Comments Off on Rich states urged to cut tariffs, stop subsidies: Shaukat meets G-20 ministers
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Friday urged the developed world to cut its tariffs and stop subsidies, while giving a clear timetable to make the gains of globalisation more equitable.

"We cannot have a selective global trade agenda which is tilted," he told agriculture ministers of the G-20 countries here at the picturesque President House.

Shaukat Aziz said the developed world was not providing a level playing field despite its pledges by continuing to give subsidies to its farmers while imposing higher tariffs on items from the under-developed countries.

"We are committed to free trade in its truest sense and the developing countries can only meet the millennium development goals (MDGs) if they can gain greater market access to the developed countries," he added.

The Prime Minister said globalisation has added new characteristics to these challenges through new markets, new tools, new rules and innovative and dynamic framework.

However, he said, globalisation was a challenge and an opportunity. "It is creating interdependencies and linkages between countries of the world, their markets, and their people manifested inflows and concentration of corporate power," he said.

Shaukat Aziz said subsidies by the industrialised world were providing competitive advantage to their producers irrespective of their efficiency to compete because of mechanisation.

However, if globalisation had to stay, the opportunities and benefits it offers needed to be shared much more widely.

The G-20 ministerial meeting at Bhurban is taking place at a crucial time as negotiations on Doha Round Agenda enter the last phase.

The G-20 has given new dynamism to trade negotiations at the World Trade Organisation as its members account for 65 percent of the world's population of which 72 percent are farmers and have a 22 percent share in agriculture output.

Shaukat Aziz said the G-20 has a responsibility to ensure that the decision taken at the Doha summit of a timetable for gradual withdrawal of subsidies is met.

He, however, warned that otherwise all free trade agenda would collapse.

The Prime Minister said the last meeting of the G-20 has already called for elimination of all export subsidies in agriculture within five years and substantial reduction in trade distorting measures such as non-tariff-barriers, subsidies, limited market access and concentration of corporate power in a few hands.

Copyright Associated Press of Pakistan, 2005


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