Business conferen
ce is upbeat on world economic growth despite protectionism fears
Budapest, 4 May 2000 - Against a background of healthy economic growth in most regions of the world, business concerns are focussed on safeguarding the rules-based multilateral trading system as protectionist sentiment rises.
This was the overall assessment of government and business speakers during the World Congress of the International Chamber of Commerce attended by the Prime Ministers of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic and more than 1,000 business leaders worldwide.
Reviewing the state of the world economy, speakers said there should be greater cross-border movement of skilled and technical personnel and stressed the need to ensure that industrialized countries open their markets to developing country exports, in particular agriculture and textiles.
Klaus Friedrich, Chief Economist of the Dresdner Bank, urged economists and business people to communicate more effectively the basic message that globalization presented "more opportunities than downsides."
Jagdish Bhagwati, Professor of Economics at Columbia University, was convinced that trade liberalization would continue despite what he termed "the Seattle debacle" - the failure to launch a new round of multilateral trade negotiations at the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting last November and the accompanying protests. He noted that most countries had embraced unilateral liberalization as a means of fostering economic growth and development.
Arthur Dunkel, former Director General of the WTO's forerunner, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, said that although the negative impact of the Seattle protests had been blown out of proportion, he had several concerns regarding the future of the multilateral trading system.
WTO members today were no better prepared than before Seattle to launch a new trade round, Mr Dunkel said. No consensus on a minimal set of issues existed among the "Quad" group of some of the most influential WTO members - Canada, the European Union, Japan and the United States.
Mr Dunkel said that while underlying support for a new trade round existed, it would take time to translate this support into political will on the part of governments. The time should be used to complete the necessary technical preparatory work to ensure a successful negotiations.
However, if too much time elapsed before the launch of a new round, the consolidation of existing WTO rules and the development of new rules would not happen. This could have a negative impact on the world economy.
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