Interview: Ministerial engagement, commitment pivotal to address ailing trade outlook: WTO chief

Speaking ahead of the G20 Trade Ministers Meeting in Shanghai this week, WTO's Director General Robert Azevedo on Wednesday urged ministers to enhance efforts seeking to find solutions for a number of key issues in view of boosting fledgling trade perspectives.

"What I have been trying to tell ministers every time I meet them is that there are many opportunities for the WTO," Azevedo told Xinhua in an interview.

"On the Doha round we are trying to find solutions and ideas... regarding non-Doha Development Agenda issues, many things have been mentioned such as electronic commerce, small and medium enterprises, facilitation of investments and services, but all at a very general level," he added.

The ministerial conference comes amid uncertain times for the global economy, with growth in the volume of trade forecast to reach 2.8 percent in 2016, the fifth consecutive year below 3 percent.

"With no economic growth trade suffers. Where we used to have a ratio of two to one between economic growth and trade growth, now it's about one to one," Azevedo explained.

He listed a number of factors that have been set in motion in a bid to catalyse global trade, such as Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), the expansion of the information technology treaty.

The TFA, also known as the Bali package, lays out directives to expedite the movement, release and clearance of goods so as to reduce the overall cost of trading.

This covenant is especially important since it was the first multilateral agreement reached by member states since WTO came into being over 20 years ago.

Meanwhile, the expansion of the information technology treaty is also a step towards facilitating trade, Azevedo explained, in line with the participants' pledge to eliminate tariffs on IT products covered by the agreement.

An additional 201 products valued at over 1.3 trillion U.S. dollars per year were sanctioned by over 50 members at WTO's 10th Ministerial Conference in Nairobi last year.

Efforts aiming to eliminate trade barriers on environmental goods and services were also welcomed by the Director-General.

Despite these concerted measures, Azevedo called for enhanced commitment to address some of the protracted stalemates marring WTO negotiations, namely the Doha round of talks considered inefficient and out of date by many pundits.

This long-standing impasse has seen a number of states opt for regional trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership or the proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

"We need more specificity, and I need the ministers' particular attention and engagement to push these conversations forward. Without ministerial engagement it's going to be a lot harder," he said.

Brexit was also seen as dampener for global trade, with Britain's decision to leave the European Union (EU) clouding short and medium term perspectives.

With uncertainty stemming from lack of precedence, Azevedo highlighted that it is hard to tell what the negotiations will look like within WTO itself.

"If the UK leaves the EU, the process as far as trade implications in the WTO are uncertain. We don't know what negotiations will be necessarily," he said.

"As far as global trade is concerned, I don't think the uncertainty and turbulence that we experience today is going to be helpful," he added.

"In the short-run, I don't think that anybody wins, everybody loses other than possibly those who speculate," he concluded. Enditem