Global Policy Forum

By Trade Justice Movement

The incoming head of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has revealed he has plans for new rules to govern the activities of multinational corporations in influencing international trade agreements. Speaking on 8 June, 2002 at the World Development Movement's Annual Conference in central London, WTO Director General Designate, Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi said he was planning: "to bring in, to introduce, some sort of a code of conduct. Which is something that I'm not getting support from countries around the world, particularly some advanced countries, they see it that I'll be trying to intervene too much into the corporate sector's movements. But what I'm trying to suggest is that while we are trying to put up new regimes, new agreements, new rules for countries to abide by, we don't seem to have any rules for the multinationals and transnational corporations to go by."

He revealed his plans in response to a question from the audience asking how he would resist the pressure from the corporate sector. Dr Supachai said that he did feel the pressure and that the agreement on intellectual property rights (TRIPS): "was one of the glaring examples of the pressure coming from the corporate sector on governments that ultimately resulted in some agreements being forced on countries that we have to try to prevent."

Dr Supachi said of his plans that: "I have made suggestions along this line several times, that I would propose a sort of a framework, that I would try to work with other organisations like the OECD - which is a neutral institution - or the World Bank or the UN. They have their own codes of conduct for some areas of transnationals, but I would deal with trade areas. And so you'll be hearing more of this, but let me give you a warning that I have got some comments on it, negative comments, that some countries are not in agreement with this kind of effort."

Earlier at the same event Dr Supachai contradicted claims that developing countries were the winners from the WTO negotiations in Doha last November: "We need countries, particularly the advanced countries to realise that development is not just a semantic, this is a discussion on substance. When it comes to substance you need concession, you need sacrifices, and last time maybe developing countries were asked to sacrifice themselves in Doha. I hope that when it comes to the next Ministerial conference we will see sacrifices coming from the advanced countries to make the round really a development round."

Dr Supachai, who takes over from Mike Moore as WTO Director General in September, also warned against measuring the success of a trade round simply in terms of increased volume of trade: "with all the trade rounds people like to quantify the trade rounds by saying there will be trillions of US dollars of new trade volume being created? I'm trying to convince people that when you talk about the so-called 'development angle' you don't talk about the dollars and cents - the value of trade alone. You talk about the real products, you talk about the real gains and you talk about employment creation."

Dr Supachai said that Prof Jan Tinbergen (the first ever winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics) taught him the need for "Looking beyond figures all the time. This is what I hope to bring with me to Geneva to try to make people understand a sense of what they are negotiating about. It is not only to create more trade volume. It is the distribution of the trade volume, it's the quality of the trade volume that we are talking about."

Dr Supachai called for "special attention" to the needs South Asia, the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa in trade negotiations including technical assistance and capacity building. He also hoped that Special and Differential treatment would be more extensively covered: "Not only in terms of timeframe but maybe in terms of having more to do with some policy interventions by some of those countries. Interventions that might be seen to be probably contradicting or violating some of the existing GATT rules."

Responding today Barry Coates, Director of the World Development Movement said: "This is a step in the right direction. But any code of conduct needs to be binding and fully enforceable, not voluntary. We also need parallel measures in national capitals where much of the corporate influence overtrade policy takes place."

Notes:

Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi is the Director General-Designate of the WTO. He is a former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Commerce of Thailand. Dr Supachai was the keynote speaker at the World Development Movement's annual conference Whose Rules Rule? Trade, Debt and Corporate Power, held at the Institute of Education in Central London on 8 June 2002.

The full transcript (and audio recording) of Dr Supachai's speech will be available on the internet from the Fabian Society's Global Forum (www.fabianglobalforum.net) from Monday 16 June.

For more on WDM's work exposing the corporate influence on UK trade policy see www.wdm.org.uk/campaign/GATSlotis.htm.

Contact: Dave Timms, Press Officer: 020 7274 7630 (WDM), 07711 875 345 (mbl)

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