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High Food Prices Leave Developing Countries Struggling to Cope
For over six years, negotiators from governments around the world have been haggling over cuts to farm subsidies and barriers to agricultural trade in talks at the WTO. Competitive exporters seeking greater liberalisation have met stiff opposition from countries determined to protect their farm sectors from the full force of international competition. The wrangling continues,…
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TNC: Lamy Says Horizontal Process “Coming Soon”; But When?
WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy said last week that "solid progress" since February meant that governments were "now much closer to the finish line" in the troubled Doha Round talks. Nevertheless, it remains unclear whether ministers from around the world will be in a position to hammer out a framework global trade deal by the…
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Little Progress In EU-Central America FTA Talks
A third round of free trade agreement negotiations between the European Union (EU) and Central America concluded last week with little progress on the thorniest issues, though officials said that they better understood each other’s interests and positions, Johanna Hill, the Salvadorean vice-minister of the economy, stated that during the 14-18 April talks, negotiators…
- In Brief
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India To Extend Duty Free Market Access To LDCs
India earlier this month announced plans to grant unilateral market access to most exports from least-developed countries (LDCs). Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that the duty- and quota-free access scheme would cover products that account for 92.5 percent of LDCs’ total global exports (and 94 percent of India’s total tariff lines). Covered products…
- Events
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Events
Coming up: 24 - 30 April 28-29 April, Paris, France. MEETING OF THE ORGANIZATION FOR ECONOMIC COOPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT’S ENVIRONMENT POLICY COMMITTEE AT MINISTERIAL LEVEL: "ENVIRONMENT AND GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS." OECD Environment Ministers will meet to discuss recent environmental trends and the projections in the OECD Environmental Outlook to 2030, environmental co-operation between…
- Resources
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Resources
COMMODITY DEPENDENCE AND DEVELOPMENT: SUGGESTIONS TO TACKLE THE COMMODITIES PROBLEM. ActionAid and South Centre, 2008. A positive correlation has been found between dependence on primary agricultural commodities and poverty, as measured by the human development index. This is due to three prominent features of commodity markets: price volatility; the secular decline of long-term prices; and…