Andean countries agree on strategies vis-a-vis FTAA and WTO

Lima, Sept. 17. The Andean Community (CAN) countries today devised strategies for defending the subregion's interests at the ministerial meetings of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), to be held this year.

This announcement was made by the CAN foreign trade ministers at the conclusion today of a two-day meeting in Lima to study the position they will uphold at the V FTAA Ministerial Meeting in Toronto on November 3 and 4 and the III WTO Ministerial Conference, planned for the end of November in Seattle.

César Luna Victoria, Peru's Industry Minister, who chaired the meeting, stated that it had probed national and corporate economic strengths and weaknesses in order to identify sensitive issues and areas of common interest for bettering the Andean countries' negotiating possibilities.

Colombian Foreign Trade Minister Marta Lucía Ramírez, for her part, reported that one of the basic tenets of the Andean position would be the defense of "special and differentiated treatment for developing countries" so that "we may maintain a series of productive policy instruments."

She warned that the FTAA and WTO negotiations will be "very complex," for they will be carried out simultaneously and "will shape the productive structure of the coming century." This poses a two-fold challenge for the Andean countries of "giving our products a larger element of value added and making trade into a vehicle for furthering our development."

Luna Victoria gave his assurance that the "Andean countries will negotiate on a basis of equality, but at the same time will demand that asymmetries be taken into account." As a result, they hope to obtain longer terms in certain areas so that their economic deregulation processes are not played out simultaneously with those of the developed countries.

Bolivian Minister Carlos Saavedra called attention to the fact that the world has been governed over the past 50 years by political organizations, like the UN, but that "during the next half century, trade will be the determining element," agreeing with Luna Victoria's definition of the WTO as the "third millennium's great arbitrator."

For his part, the CAN Secretary General considered the results of the Lima meeting to be "highly satisfactory," for they made it possible to define the subregion's interests with regard to "two vital scenarios. On the one hand, there is the hemisphere's FTAA, where the CAN holds a joint position and speaks with a single voice and on the other, there is the WTO, where the playing rules of international trade will be worked out."

The ministers called attention to the importance of the private sector and the need for its involvement in international trade negotiations. To that end, they committed themselves to meet with entrepreneurs in order to explain the strategic guidelines of the subregion's positions vis-a-vis the FTAA and the WTO and to take advantage of their opinions.

The FTAA was born out of the agreement reached at the Miami summit in December 1994, by 34 hemispheric Heads of State who committed themselves to conclude the negotiations of the free trade area by the year 2005.

The WTO's Third Ministerial Conference, for its part, will be held from November 30 to December 3, 1999 and will assemble over 150 governments for the purpose of launching the next great round of world trade negotiations.