Bali Preparations, Innovation in Focus at Annual WTO Forum

Civil society actors, including NGOs, academics, private sector representatives, and policymakers, gathered in Geneva this week to address the various linkages between innovation and trade, and the related challenges and opportunities that have emerged in the rapidly changing global market. The annual outreach event - known as the WTO Public Forum - comes in a ministerial year for the global trade body, with ministers from the 159-member organisation set to meet in the Indonesian island province of Bali this December in an effort to clinch a “mini-package” from the long-running Doha trade talks.

hough the main theme of the event was innovation, with sessions touching on subjects such as e-commerce, mobile technology, and the digital economy, the spectre of the upcoming ministerial conference loomed over the three-day proceedings, with various meetings specifically tackling different aspects of the Bali negotiations.

Bali-related topics on the agenda ranged from the Doha Round’s impact on least developed countries (LDCs) to trade facilitation from business and consumer perspectives, as well as the implications of the ministerial for the remaining Doha process and the post-2015 development agenda, to name a few.

Despite recent reports of a “new dynamic” in the WTO ministerial preparations, Director-General Roberto Azevêdo has warned repeatedly in the weeks since he took office that the process remains too slow, and that new approaches and flexibilities are vital if the December high-level conference is to be successful.

The new WTO chief alluded to the timing in his opening remarks on Tuesday, noting that the multilateral trading system is “the most important feature” of the trade-innovation relationship.

Froman: Trade facilitation a “win-win”

US Trade Representative Michael Froman, in his keynote speech on Tuesday, similarly called for WTO negotiations to evolve in order to facilitate - or even drive - innovation in technology and international trade.

“Bali has the potential to be a vital step towards the WTO creating something new, something that can lead to other new opportunities - to innovation in our approach to multilateral negotiations,” he urged.

The US official, whose stop in Geneva is one in a series this week related to major trade initiatives, with the others focusing on the US-EU trade talks and the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, particularly urged WTO members in his speech to resolve their disagreements on trade facilitation - one of the proposed deliverables for Bali - which he deemed “as close to a ‘win-win’ as exists in the real world.”

“In Geneva, trade facilitation is too often a bargaining chip in the great game of multilateral trade negotiations, a pivot point for tactical maneuvering…. We must close this gap,” he said. Talks to finalise the trade facilitation draft text have run into both technical and political hurdles in recent weeks that sources say are proving difficult to resolve.

Panellists in the opening session, which featured the WTO chief together with Finnish Trade Minister Alexander Stubb, Talal Abu-Ghazaleh of the Talal Abu Ghazaleh Organization, Luo Feng of IZP Technologies, and WIPO Director-General Francis Gurry, similarly stressed the value of a trade facilitation deal for improving logistics.