WTO chief calls
for aid rethink
Kurdish Glob Paper - Saturday, 19
April 2008, 07:13 EDT
http://www.kurdishglobe.net/displayArticle.jsp?id=4FDC120EF6F0ECE0E2AE226338A4E66
The head of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy, has called for aid policies to be refocused to improve agriculture.
Speaking in the week that
the world woke up to the
food price crisis, Mr Lamy's
demand is radical.
He said food aid needed to
be increased but, more than
that, improvements in
agriculture needed to be put
back at the heart of
development spending.
He said it was complex and
could not be done overnight.
But, he added in an
interview with the BBC, the
shift in emphasis was
essential.
As far as development
assistance is concerned,
agriculture has not been the
main focus of the last
decade and has to be the
main focus of the coming
times.
Mr Lamy said he believed
that after seven years of
negotiations, the Doha
round, a new deal designed
to make trade freer and
fairer for the poorest
countries, could be
achieved.
But the immediate reaction
of a number of countries to
the food price shock has
been in the other direction,
with France wanting higher
subsidies for farmers, and a
number of food-exporting
countries imposing
restrictions on exports.
