|
||
|
TWN
Info Service on WTO and Trade Issues (Jul21/05) Geneva, 5 Jun (D. Ravi Kanth) – In a rather unusual development concerning the likely response by the WTO to the Covid-19 pandemic, three separate meetings are being held on 6 July, with one of them being conducted by Singapore and Jamaica ostensibly to promote the WTO Director-General Ms Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s “third way” approach, said people familiar with the development. The three meetings include: (1) informal TRIPS Council meeting that is currently immersed in the TRIPS waiver negotiations to finalize the WTO’s response to the pandemic; (2) by the newly appointed facilitator by the WTO General Council to prepare a “multilateral process” on the WTO’s response to the pandemic; and (3) Singapore and Jamaica’s controversial meeting “to facilitate the ongoing discussion that Director-General, Ms Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has initiated on what the WTO can do in response to the current COVID-19 pandemic and to prepare for future pandemics.” Of the three meetings, the one conducted by Ambassador Tan Hung Seng of Singapore and Ambassador Cheryl K. Spencer of Jamaica seems to be without any approval either from the General Council (GC) or the Doha Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), said people, who asked not to be quoted. “This is an alarming development that goes to vindicate the ongoing extra-rules-based approaches that are being adopted at the WTO to push the DG’s agenda,” said a former trade envoy, who preferred not to be quoted. In their email sent to members, and seen by this writer, Singapore and Jamaica stated that they are seeking trade envoys’ responses to a set of issues which are incidentally also being pushed by the Ottawa Group and a few other countries on “COVID-19: Trade and Health”, which is structured almost on the lines of what the DG had stated in her address to the GC meeting on 1 March. The Ottawa Group led by Canada and other countries circulated their proposal on 30 June in which they sought agreement on export restrictions; customs services and technical regulations; tariffs; transparency review; and other considerations to be adopted at the WTO’s 12th ministerial conference (MC12) to be held in Geneva end-November. Singapore is a signatory to the proposal on “COVID-19: Trade and Health” and its role in seeking responses to facilitate the discussions initiated by the DG remains a serious cause for concern, the trade envoy said. Ambassador Seng from Singapore and Ambassador Spencer from Jamaica have raised several questions in their email to structure “our exchanges” around these questions. The questions include: 1. What role could the WTO play in addressing aspects such as export restrictions, and other trade and regulatory barriers to trade in medical goods, trade in services, supply chain resilience, trade facilitation, and the contribution of trade to post-pandemic recovery? 2. How can transparency and monitoring be improved to ensure that supply chains for vaccines and other medical products remain open? 3. How could the WTO address the expansion of vaccine production and enhance vaccine distribution, including through the implementation and full use of IP-related flexibilities? The two trade envoys said that they “do not intend to address the TRIPS waiver proposal.” However, the three questions also appear to provide answers as to what these two trade envoys are seeking to promote, such as export restrictions and the full use of IP-related flexibilities and so on, said people, who asked not to be quoted. According to unconfirmed reports, the DG apparently wanted Singapore and Jamaica to lead the consultations on the WTO’s response to the pandemic but this did not gain traction because of opposition from the GC chair Ambassador Dacio Castillo from Honduras, who chose to appoint the former GC chair Ambassador David Walker from New Zealand as facilitator of the multilateral process going forward, said people, who asked not to be quoted. In his statement at an informal meeting of the General Council on 22 June, Ambassador Castillo said that “some of you have suggested the possibility of setting up a Facilitator-led, horizontal, and multilateral process under the auspices of the General Council – into which all these individual processes would ultimately feed.” The GC chair did not refer to what are these “individual processes”, and whether he is suggesting the Singapore- Jamaica process as well, said people, who asked not to be quoted. Under the WTO’s rules-based negotiating/consultation processes, the initiative of these two countries, ostensibly to promote the DG’s agenda, has caused some consternation among members about the attempts to distract members from the temporary TRIPS waiver discussions, said a person, who asked not to be quoted. The temporary TRIPS waiver proposal seeks to suspend the implementation of key provisions in the TRIPS Agreement relating to copyrights, industrial designs, patents, and protection of undisclosed information for combating the COVID-19 pandemic through ramping-up the production of diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines across countries for a period of at least three years. “The TRIPS waiver proposal offers a comprehensive and expeditious means for this forum to contribute to the WTO’s COVID-19 response,” said South Africa’s TRIPS negotiator Mr Mustaqeem De Gama at the TRIPS Council meeting on 24 June.
|
||
