Minister welcomes 'balanced' WTO deal on trade

Minister for Trade, Michael Ahern, yesterday welcomed the deal struck over the weekend at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks in Hong Kong, describing it as a fair and balanced outcome for Ireland.

"The international trading environment is of particular importance to Ireland's economy and an effective WTO is very much part of this," said the Minister, who represented Ireland at the talks. "We went into these negotiations not only to improve on Ireland's trade prospects but also to secure the delivery of a substantial trade development package to poorer countries and we have delivered on both of these."

One of the main achievements of the agreement between the 148 members of the WTO was a commitment to provide as much as €14 billion of aid to help less developed countries build the infrastructure necessary to improve exports and an agreement to continue negotiations next year. The rich nations also agreed to remove most of their restrictions on imports from the lesser developed countries.

The deal was welcomed by some, but not by all. Irish farmers expressed their dissatisfaction with the outcome, predicting that thousands of jobs will be lost as more of the European food market is taken over by other parts of the world.

Brendan Howlin, Labour party spokesman on enterprise, trade and employment, said that while he welcomed giving poorer countries better access to the markets of the US and western Europe, he was concerned that only countries that have already developed a trading and market-based infrastructure will be able to benefit from the new access. For many of the least developed countries, the priority should be to improve trading conditions within their own borders and local regions, he said.

However, as far as Ireland is concerned, the deal is a good one,according to the Irish Exporters' Association (IEA). The group welcomed the agreement, saying in the long run, Ireland's export trade will increase as a result of the further trade liberalisation stimulated by the agreement.

The IEA said that when analysing the outcome of the negotiations, the reductions in agricultural tariffs, domestic support and export subsidies must be balanced against reductions in manufacturing tariffs and barriers to service trade, as well as improvements to trade facilitation.

According to the IEA, Irish service exporters are set to benefit from the estimated 50 per cent reduction in tariff barriers from outside the European Union. According to a recent report from the WTO, Ireland is one of the fastest growing exporters of services in the world, with the sector currently accounting for about 31 per cent of total Irish exporters.

While the talks were also positive for exporters of industrial products, the outcome for the agricultural sector wasn't so good, the IEA said. Still, current protections to Irish producers remain until June 2013 and only after this date is output from all primary agriculture sectors projected to fall.