SECRETARY-GENERAL URGES DEVELOPED COUNTRIES TO ‘DRAMATICALLY REDUCE’ AGRICULTURAL SUBSIDIES, AT HIGH-LEVEL ECOSOC MEETING

SECRETARY-GENERAL URGES DEVELOPED COUNTRIES TO ‘DRAMATICALLY REDUCE’

AGRICULTURAL SUBSIDIES, AT HIGH-LEVEL ECOSOC MEETING

Cuts in unproductive and discriminatory agricultural subsidies would provide “a much-needed boost to the Doha negotiations” on an international trade agreement, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in an address to a United Nations meeting with policy makers of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund today in New York.

Stating concern in regard to a difficult international economic environment, the Secretary-General said, in the speech delivered on his behalf by Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette:  “We must all do our part to rebuild global confidence”.

“I urge developed countries to dramatically reduce agricultural subsidies, without delay”, the Secretary-General said to an audience of finance ministers and policy makers from the Bank, the Fund and the WTO, hosted by the United Nations Economic and Social Council.  Such reductions, he said, would help the world economy, would remove domestic and international trade distortions and would signal to the developing countries that “they can still hope for the development round they were promised” at the outset of the Doha negotiations.

“For many years now, developing countries have been encouraged to eliminate subsidies as a basic step in getting their fiscal affairs houses in order, which in turn would help create the necessary conditions for growth”, the Secretary-General said.  “Yet the developed countries persist with agricultural subsidies and tariffs of their own against the exports of developing countries, offsetting or even undoing the benefits of other forms of cooperation with those same countries”.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, (OECD), member countries maintained $330 billion of agricultural subsidies in 2001.  The World Bank estimates that these subsidies and other rich country protection in agriculture costs farmers in poor countries upwards of $30 billion a year.

The meeting at United Nations Headquarters, following by one day the conclusion of the annual Spring meeting of the Bretton Woods institutions in Washington, D.C., is a review of progress since last year’s development summit -– the International Conference on Financing for Development -- held in Monterrey, Mexico.

That Conference, according to the United NationsSecretary-General, identified a major gap in global governance:  that “there was no convenient way for the key specialized multilateral institutions in the fields of monetary, financial, trade and development issues to come together and explore ways to work with each other and reinforce each other’s actions”.

“The United Nations is the natural home for that discussion, and this meeting is an attempt to provide precisely such an opportunity.”

Also addressing the meeting on 14 April on Financing for Development follow through are South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, the chairperson of the Bretton Woods Development Committee; Lebanese Finance Minister Fouad Siniora, chairperson of the BrettonWoods-associated Group of 24 developing countries; Mary Whelan, chairperson of the Trade Policy Review Body of the World Trade Organization, the main intergovernmental board of the WTO; and German Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul.

For more information, contact Tim Wall of the Development Section of the United Nations Department of Public Information, 1-212-963-5851; wallt@un.org.

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