WTO urges enhanced efforts to tackle global inequality beyond trade openness
Date
9/11/2024 6:22:44 AM
(MENAFN) The World Trade Organization (WTO) has called for greater efforts to address the widening income gap between wealthy and impoverished nations, emphasizing that merely promoting trade openness is insufficient to bridge this divide. In its 2024 World Trade Report, the WTO assessed how trade has influenced the income disparity between economies since the organization’s inception in 1995. The report reaffirms trade's significant role in reducing poverty and promoting shared prosperity, countering the prevailing view that trade and institutions like the WTO have failed to benefit poorer countries and have exacerbated global inequality.
WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, in her foreword to the report, highlighted two critical messages. Firstly, the report underscores the transformative impact of trade on alleviating poverty and fostering shared economic growth. Secondly, it emphasizes that there is substantial room for improvement in making trade and the WTO more effective for economies and communities that have been left behind during the past 30 years of globalization. She argues that protectionist measures are not a viable solution, as they often lead to higher production costs and provoke trade retaliation.
The report notes that less developed low- and middle-income countries typically engage less in international trade, attract fewer foreign investments, rely heavily on commodity exports, and have fewer trading partners. It asserts that open and simplified trade rules alone are insufficient for ensuring inclusiveness. Instead, these rules need to be accompanied by complementary policies at both domestic and international levels. The WTO, which now includes 166 member states following recent additions of Comoros and East Timor, remains a central player in international trade cooperation, with ongoing and future rules aimed at enhancing investment facilitation, domestic service regulation, and digital trade to further the re-globalization process.
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