ACCEPTANCE SPEECH AND GOALS
The World Trade Organization on Monday officially appointed the first woman and first black African to serve as Director General, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala will assume the post on March 1st for a renewable term expiring on Aug. 31, 2025. Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said in her acceptance speech that the WTO would get the gobal economy running again during her tenure. She expressed willingness to make the WTO stronger, adding that the organization would adapt to the “realities of today”. She went on to say, “I applaud the seven other highly qualified candidates for having come forward to participate in this selection process. The energy and dedication they brought to the process enriched it and underscored a shared belief in the ability of the multilateral trading system to make a significant contribution to the expansion of the global economy for the benefit of all members.
I would like to express my profound gratitude to the WTO membership for electing me to lead this organization at this critical juncture, special thanks to President Muhammadu Buhari and all my Nigerian compatriots for their support and prayers. I also want to recognize and thank Ecowas and AU heads of states, the ACP Secretary General and the ACP membership for their early support of my candidacy. Thank you to other members who supported my candidacy from start to finish of this selection process. Without the recent swift action by the Biden Harris administration to join the consensus of the membership of my candidacy, we would not be here today. I am grateful to the United States for the prompt action and strong expression of support. Finally, my thanks to my family and friends too numerous to name them here for their strength and encouragement throughout this process. It’s been a long and tough road, full of uncertainty, but now it’s the dawn of a new day and the real work can begin.
Today WTO members are making history. For the first time in the 73 years of WTO, you are selecting a woman and an African as Director General, this is groundbreaking and positive. I am grateful for the trust you have in me not just as a woman and an African, but also in my knowledge, experience and as some of you have said, courage and passion to work with you to undertake the wide-ranging reforms the WTO needs to reposition itself for the future. At the WTO, the DG leads from behind working with the talented secretarial staff to help members achieve results.
You can count on me to be proactive, to work hard, to be balanced, fair, professional and objective so as to continuously earn and sustain your trust. That way, together we can restore and rebrand the W.T.O as a key pillar of global economic governance, a force for a strong transparent and fair multilateral trading system and an instrument for inclusive economic growth and sustainable development”.
AGENDA/GOALS OF WTO
The W.T.O. was already facing acute challenges before Covid19, these challenges have now been applied by the pandemic. In addition to the regretful mountain loss of life, the pandemic has wreaked havoc on the global economy impacting supply chains and disrupting transport and travel, the crisis has helped ended trade and economic activities leading to job losses and reduced incomes around the world. It has erased years of economic gains made by several developing countries and even decades of growth in some low income and least developed countries. Many have been pushed deeper into debt compromising their ability to meet the UN sustainable development goals by 2030. But there is hope on the horizon, the WTO expects world merchandise strength to rebound strongly this year. The IMF forecast an 8% growth in global trade volumes in 2021 and a 6% growth in
2022 while it estimates global GDP to rebound from a -4.4% growth rate in 2020 to 5.5% in 2021 with a projected 4.2 % growth rate in 2022. However, we cannot be complacent. For the global economy to return to sustained growth, it will need to get a tight grip on the pandemic. The preamble to the Marrakesh agreement states that the objectives of the WTO are to raise living standards and shuffle employment, increase incomes, expand the production and trading goods and services and seek the optimal use of the world’s resources in accordance with the objective of sustainable development, the preamble says it all. The WTO is about people, it is about decent work, let us place its overarching purpose front and centre as a driver for all we seek to accomplish for the multilateral trading system.
We need to look at how we can strengthen the working procedures of various WTO bodies so that they can better serve the membership. Transparency is the life blood of the system and every effort should be made to assist members to meet their notification and transparency obligations. The development and streamlining of online tools including the introduction of e-agendas is a step in the right direction. Some WTO rules and procedures also need to be revisited including the procedures of appointing the DG.
The ministerial article 4 of the Marrakesh agreement provides that ‘There shall be an MC, a ministerial composed of representatives of all members which shall meet at least once every two years’. In today’s fast space of uncertain world, it may be an opportunity for members to review the frequency of the ministerial to access whether yearly meetings would allow members to better appraise the health of the multilateral trading system, solve problems and together, advance timely solutions. Furthermore, members take decisions on the basis of consensus and rightly so since article 9, one of the Marrakesh agreement provides that ‘The WTO shall continue the practise of decision making by consensus’ but members must be vigilant that the quest for consensus does not create a situation in which welfare enhancing innovations or approaches of benefits to the membership are frustrated. The
W.T.O secretarial should be strengthened to enable it to provide culminate services to the membership in relevant areas of WTO’s work including implementation, monitoring, dispute settlement and negotiations. An important change will be to move away from the current sly load way of working to more team based than task-based approach. The secretarial task should be fit for purpose taking into account the changing dynamics of the global economy and priorities of members. The pandemic and its economic fallout have highlighted its inter-dependence of countries, the importance of multilateralism and the need to strengthen collaboration to achieve fair and balanced straight agreements which provides opportunities for all WTO members particularly for the least developed countries and small island states. By working together, we can build that trust and we can achieve a stronger relevant and inclusive trading system.
I am passionate about these goals; I am keen to support you to carry out the necessary reform. I look forward to working closely with all of you in the coming months and years, to help build the WTO that we all want. A WTO that is about people, a WTO that is dynamic, robust and that provides essential supportive economic growth and sustainable development through trade.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, let me conclude by saying that the challenges facing the WTO are numerous and tricky, but they are not insurmountable. There is hope, there is light at the end of the tunnel if we work together in a transparent manner that builds trust, builds bridges, fusses political tension and encourages convergence.
Once again, I thank you for this opportunity.
You can count on me to be proactive, to work hard, to be balanced, fair, professional and objective so as to continuously earn and sustain your trust. That way, together we can restore and rebrand the W.T.O as a key pillar of global economic governance, a force for a strong transparent and fair multilateral trading system and an instrument for inclusive economic growth and sustainable development”.