Search the Internet          Tips  Sites: Finance, Investment

'Environment, labour issues could spell doom'

Lola Nayar, in New Delhi

Including environment and labour issues in the World Trade Organisation agenda could spell the death of globalisation, a leading international industry lobbyist has warned.

"Some major countries like European Union are pushing for inclusion of labour and environment issues in the WTO negotiations, which we feel would be the death of global trade," International Chamber of Commerce president Richard McCormick said in New Delhi on Monday.

"The issues on labour are better left to the International Labour Organisation and those on environment to existing bodies," he said, adding that the ICC shares India's concerns on the inclusion of additional issues in the WTO agenda.

Their inclusion, he said, would make it difficult to achieve the objective of liberal global trade.

McCormick is in India for the annual meeting with the ICC's Indian chapter and to push for reforms in the telecommunications sector to boost e-commerce in the country.

He was speaking to mediapersons on the sidelines of a seminar on promoting international trade through e-commerce organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry. ICC has members from 130 countries.

"ICC attaches great importance to the implementation of commitments agreed to by the governments in the Uruguay Round and in subsequent multilateral negotiations that formed part of the round's unfinished business," he said.

The upcoming WTO ministerial meeting in Doha from November 9 "would be the strongest signal to show we need to be back in business," said McCormick.

Ways to eliminate non-trade barriers, reduce tariff peaks and extend tariff bindings, issues of agriculture subsidies, food safety, anti-dumping legislation in the US and a plea that regional agreements which undercut WTO should be integrated into it are some of the issues the ICC would be taking up on the sidelines of the Doha meet with ambassadors of the participating countries.

"Unless regional trade agreements are integrated into the WTO, with member countries given a most favoured nation status, they will lead to isolation of countries like India," McCormick emphasised.

World trade has grown enormously as a percentage of global gross domestic products. "The only way to go on is to keep progressing and not stop," he said.

The ICC annual meeting would attempt a strategy for the WTO meet "as developing countries hold the key to global trade. With world trade having opened up enormous opportunities, we feel, more the market access given to countries, the more it would solve the problems holding back world trade," said McCormick.

Commenting on the global trade scenario, McCormick who holds key positions in several international companies like United Airlines and United Technologies Corporation, feels e-commerce had helped enormously in the period of slowdown even before Black Tuesday.

Since then, e-commerce has come to be a great substitute for travel and helped to propel business.

Last year e-commerce accounted for $657 billion of business transactions worldwide. In India, it totalled Rs 4.5 billion.

By 2005, India's e-commerce is projected to reach Rs 252 billion.

"Most of this would be through business-to-business transactions which is expected to coincide with economic growth in the country," said McCromick.

India's plans to legalise Internet phone calls by April 2002 is expected to greatly boost Internet use not only among families with international ties but also small businesses.

ICC is in the process of developing "online generator" that would help businesses to negotiate online for contracts and eliminate phone calls.

Indo-Asian News Service
Money
Business News

Tell us what you think of this report