Lima, Feb. 1, 2006. The Andean Community countries today expressed their will to step up efforts to make trade the lever for socially inclusive development and so informed the Director General of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy, whose support they requested to accomplish this objective. 

The WTO Director General today visited the Andean Community General Secretariat headquarters, where he was received by the Ministers of Trade of the CAN Member Countries in a special meeting of the Commission called for that purpose and attended y the Secretary General of the Andean organization, Ambassador Allan Wagner, and the President of the Andean Court of Justice, Olga Inés Navarrete Barrero.

During the more than two hour-long meeting, Lamy referred to the achievements of the Hong Kong Declaration, which he termed “moderate,” and called for a commitment on the part of all WTO Members, including the Andean countries, to accomplish the objectives of the Doha Round over the rest of this year.   “Much remains to be done” and if the Andean countries “are able to combine the world trade opening with their integration process, they will see their wealth multiply,” he pointed out. 

The Ministers, in turn, underscored the progress made at the Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong last December, particularly the commitment to phase out agricultural subsidies by 2013 at the latest.  They also called attention to the need to address issues like liberalizing trade in agricultural products and full market opening to tropical products and to those that are important for replacing illegal crops, as well as to the so-called “special products” of small producers, in which trade and development issues merge with the fight against poverty.  

In the course of the meeting, the Secretary General of the Andean Community, Ambassador Allan Wagner Tizón, warned that important responsibilities and tasks remained to be fulfilled in order to ensure that by 2015, 320 million people will have emerged from poverty and proposed a longer-term working program to strength the link between trade and development, as well as regional integration.