ICC policy recommendations for the Cancún Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization

It has contributed greatly to liberalizing world trade and improving market access, and is a major driving force for global economic growth, job creation, and wider consumer choice.

ICC wishes to take this opportunity to convey key business messages and policy recommendations to trade ministers participating in the 5th WTO Ministerial Conference in September 2003 in Cancún (Mexico).

Now that the war in Iraq is over, ICC urges WTO members to put their divisions behind them and commit themselves to renewed multilateral cooperation for the vital purposes of rebuilding business and consumer confidence and reinvigorating a weak global economy.

It is in the urgent interest of all WTO member countries to work closely together to ensure the success of the Doha Development Agenda, launched at the 4th Ministerial Conference of the WTO in November 2001 at Doha (Qatar). It will be essential for WTO members to make substantial progress on the broad agenda agreed at Doha, in the lead-up to and at Cancún, in order to reaffirm in concrete form the key role of the WTO multilateral system in the management of globalization and in enabling its benefits to spread throughout society in all parts of the world.

ICC urges governments to communicate more effectively to the public at large the benefits of trade liberalization for economic growth and development so as to build more solid support for the rules-based multilateral trading system and progressive trade liberalization. For its part, ICC will continue to contribute the business voice to this effort.