18 February 2004	Wednesday	26 Zilhaj 1424

ISLAMABAD, Feb 17: Pakistan stands no chance of reaping the benefits of increasing trade in high value-added man-made fibres after withdrawal of quotas on textiles next January because of wrong policies of the government , Zubair Khan, former commerce minister, said this here on Tuesday.

The countries that are likely to claim the bulk of trade in these products in the next few years are China and India, he said during his presentation on the final day of a two-day national workshop on "WTO Agreements and the Implications for Pakistan" organized jointly by the Commerce Ministry, Economic Advisory Wing, UNDP and UNESCAP.

All that Pakistan could look forward to was some share in low value-added products of man-made fibre, he added. The paper that evoked a heated discussion was the one presented by Marc Proksch, Economic Affairs Officer, Trade Policy Section, UNESCAP.

It was basically a neo-liberalist treatise large on claims about benefits of liberalization but short on real implications for the ordinary people.

Advising Pakistan to continue to play proactive role in the WTO particularly as member of the G-20 group, he offered little hope of an early resolution of the developing country governments' stand on subsidies on agricultural products in the rich countries of the West.

He traced these to the post-World War II era when Europe was in ruins and the governments there were anxious to obtain accelerated production. Over the past half century, these subsidies have become ingrained in basic rights of the people. While their quick withdrawal was a sensitive issue, the developed countries were reducing these slowly.

The developing countries should be content if these are reduced by 50 per cent and, meanwhile, try to compensate themselves by extracting more concessions in other areas such as industrial and service sectors.

Nevertheless, he said all countries would benefit from trade liberalization of agriculture but this needed to be done in a fair and transparent manner with developed countries as the main "distorters" bearing the main responsibility.

At the same time, he added, the developing countries also had the responsibility to reduce trade barriers among themselves because, as per his neo-liberal view, "economic gains result from liberalisation, not protection".

Talking to Dawn, Mr Proksch expressed the view that Pakistan should lower high tariff barriers on agricultural imports and try to compete in these by raising the quality of products through more investment on research and development.

Dr Sarfaraz Qureshi, former Director of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, said only 4 per cent of the population in western countries was engaged in agriculture. Their governments were pandering to this small minority to the detriment of developing countries, he contended.

It were the developed countries that needed to remove subsidies first. Once they did so, the developing countries would do the same, he contended.

Another official from UNESCAP, Ms Tiziana Bonapace, extrapolating the gains of the East Asian countries to the entire Asia-Pacific region, theorised, in a blatant travesty of historical truth, that liberalization drove the pace of economic growth in the ESCAP region.

She ignored the fact that, firstly, ESCAP region also include the semi-industrialised countries like Pakistan characterized by increasing unemployment and poverty and, secondly, East Asian countries owe their current progress to prolonged governmental controls and interventions.

Another expert, M.K. Niazi, observed that the record of Pakistan's export growth showed only a partial success. It had an export base that remains narrow and concentrated on a few commodities, few countries and on low value-addition.