ECA Holds Workshop on Market Access
By Andrew Allimadi, Communication Officer, TRID, ECA
04 August 2004

The Trade and Regional Integration Division (TRID) of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) is currently conducting a three-day training workshop on market access issues. Santiago Fernandez de Cordoba, an economist working with the Trade Analysis Branch (TAB) of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is leading the workshop. The training will augment the work currently being done by TRID in support of African countries on strategies for the current Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations. The workshop will discuss both agricultural and non-agricultural market access and their effects on African countries.

Santiago Fernandez de Cordoba will outline the ongoing work UNCTAD is doing on international trade negotiations, including economic models being developed that will enable UNCTAD to quantify the possible impacts of the Doha Round on developing countries. He will stress that the Cancun meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) basically failed due to lack of political will on the part of both developing and developed countries, and demonstrate that many developing countries, and especially the African ones, have made great efforts to liberalize their trade.

Technical issues under discussion at the Doha Round, including the Swiss formula, the blended formula for tariff reductions will be analysed. The workshop will also discuss two recent UNCTAD publications, namely: Trick or Treat? : "Development opportunities and challenges in the WTO negotiations on industrial tariff"; and "Shifting Sands, searching for a compromise in the WTO negotiations on agriculture".