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WTO to tackle reforms, fishing subsidies as war hampers trade
The head of the World Trade Organisation will press ahead with reforms to its dispute process and a crackdown on fishery subsidies, even as a subdued global economy poses headwinds and a difficult political environment makes it hard to reach consensus, its director-general said. “We should focus very hard on delivering those reforms,” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said on Thursday, highlighting the need to revamp the Geneva-based institution’s disputesettlement mechanism and its appellate body — the WTO’s supreme arbiter on trade feuds — which has been paralysed since 2019 after the US blocked all new appointments to it, forcing an end to its quorum. “Hopefully we can deliver the reform by 2024,” the WTO chief said in an interview in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, making the WTO a “stronger and more responsive organisation.” The 166-member body held its 13th ministerial conference in Abu Dhabi earlier this month, where it failed to reach consensus on further measures to reduce subsidies that lead to overfishing. Okonjo-Iweala — whose four-year term as director-general ends on August 31, 2025 — said she hasn’t accomplished everything she’d set out to do, citing the fisheries deal as something she would like to achieve. “I was a little bit disappointed we didn’t get it,” she said. “But I’m not too upset about it because we were very close. So I think in Geneva, we just continue work to close that.”
The Geneva-based institution forecast global merchandise-trade volumes would grow 0.8% in 2023 and 3% this year. Okonjo-Iweala repeated her view shared earlier in March that both outcomes will “come in lower” because “the headwinds are strong.” “The risks are all on the downside,” the development economist said, singling out Russia’s war in Ukraine, the conflict between Israel and Hamas, attacks on ships in the Red Sea by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen and climate change as major issues.
The WTO is working with some African countries to help them get ready for commerce under the African Continental Free Trade Area, which would be the world’s biggest free-trade zone by geographical size when it becomes fully operational by 2030.
Okonjo-Iweala — who was born in Nigeria — said the region needs to invest in cross-regional infrastructure in order for the pact to succeed.
It’s “sometimes cheaper to ship goods from China to Nigeria than from let’s say South Africa to Nigeria,” she said. “We’ve got to take care of some of these things to actually make the AfCFTA work the way it should.”