New WTO chief plans rules to limit corporate influence on trade
negotiations

11 June 2002

The incoming head of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has revealed he hasplans for new rules to govern the activities of multinational corporationsin influencing international trade agreements. Speaking on 8 June, 2002 atthe World Development Movement's Annual Conference in central London, WTODirector General Designate, Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi said he was planning:"to bring in, to introduce, some sort of a code of conduct. Which issomething that I'm not getting support from countries around the world,particularly some advanced countries, they see it that I'll be trying tointervene too much into the corporate sector's movements. But what I'mtrying to suggest is that while we are trying to put up new regimes, newagreements, new rules for countries to abide by, we don't seem to have anyrules for the multinationals and transnational corporations to go by."

He revealed his plans in response to a question from the audience askinghow he would resist the pressure from the corporate sector. Dr Supachaisaid that he did feel the pressure and that the agreement on intellectualproperty rights (TRIPS): "was one of the glaring examples of the pressurecoming from the corporate sector on governments that ultimately resulted insome agreements being forced on countries that we have to try to prevent."

Dr Supachi said of his plans that: "I have made suggestions along this lineseveral times, that I would propose a sort of a framework, that I would tryto work with other organisations like the OECD - which is a neutralinstitution - or the World Bank or the UN. They have their own codes ofconduct for some areas of transnationals, but I would deal with tradeareas. And so you'll be hearing more of this, but let me give you a warningthat I have got some comments on it, negative comments, that some countriesare not in agreement with this kind of effort."

Earlier at the same event Dr Supachai contradicted claims that developingcountries were the winners from the WTO negotiations in Doha last November:"We need countries, particularly the advanced countries to realise thatdevelopment is not just a semantic, this is a discussion on substance. Whenit comes to substance you need concession, you need sacrifices, and lasttime maybe developing countries were asked to sacrifice themselves in Doha.I hope that when it comes to the next Ministerial conference we will seesacrifices coming from the advanced countries to make the round really adevelopment round."

Dr Supachai, who takes over from Mike Moore as WTO Director General inSeptember, also warned against measuring the success of a trade roundsimply in terms of increased volume of trade: "with all the trade roundspeople like to quantify the trade rounds by saying there will be trillionsof US dollars of new trade volume being created?I'm trying to convincepeople that when you talk about the so-called 'development angle' you don'ttalk about the dollars and cents - the value of trade alone. You talk aboutthe real products, you talk about the real gains and you talk aboutemployment creation."

Dr Supachai said that Prof Jan Tinbergen (the first ever winner of theNobel Prize for Economics) taught him the need for "Looking beyond figuresall the time. This is what I hope to bring with me to Geneva to try to makepeople understand a sense of what they are negotiating about. It is notonly to create more trade volume. It is the distribution of the tradevolume, it's the quality of the trade volume that we are talking about."

Dr Supachai called for "special attention" to the needs South Asia, theCaribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa in trade negotiations including technicalassistance and capacity building. He also hoped that Special andDifferential treatment would be more extensively covered: "Not only interms of timeframe but maybe in terms of having more to do with some policyinterventions by some of those countries. Interventions that might be seento be probably contradicting or violating some of the existing GATT rules."

Responding today Barry Coates, Director of the World Development Movementsaid: "This is a step in the right direction. But any code of conduct needsto be binding and fully enforceable, not voluntary. We also need parallelmeasures in national capitals where much of the corporate influence overtrade policy takes place."


Notes for editors:

• Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi is the Director General-Designate of the WTO. Heis a former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Commerce of Thailand. DrSupachai was the keynote speaker at the World Development Movement's annualconference Whose Rules Rule? Trade, Debt and Corporate Power, held at theInstitute of Education in Central London on 8 June 2002.
  
• The full transcript (and audio recording) of Dr Supachai's speech will beavailable on the internet from the Fabian Society's Global Forum(www.fabianglobalforum.net) from Monday 16 June.
  
• For more on WDM's work exposing the corporate influence on UK tradepolicy see www.wdm.org.uk/campaign/GATSlotis.htm 
  

Contact:
Dave Timms, Press Officer: (WDM), (mbl)


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