April 20, 2006	Thursday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 21, 1427

WASHINGTON, April 19: The International Monetary Fund expressed anxiety on Wednesday about the World Trade Organisation’s inability to break its deadlock over world trade, and issued a strident warning against resurgent protectionism.

IMF chief economist Raghuram Rajan said he felt “apprehension” over signs that the World Trade Organisation is set to miss an end-April deadline to forge the outlines of a liberalisation accord.

“Deadlines have been missed before. I am hopeful that good sense prevails ... and last-minute bargaining gets us where we want to be: an ambitious Doha round,” Rajan told a news conference.

Uncertainty surrounds the World Trade Organisation’s April 30 target for an accord on cutting tariffs on industrial and farming goods, clouding hopes for a deal this year on the global club’s ambitious “Doha round” of negotiations.

Concerns have intensified after US President George W. Bush on Tuesday announced that he intends to switch his trade chief, Rob Portman, to a new job in charge of budget policy.

“A failure of the Doha round, though not catastrophic, would be a very important setback,” the International Monetary Fund official said.

“Coupled with all the noises about protectionism that are emerging, it would just contribute to this strong anti-globalisation mood.

“We have to remember that much of the good fortune we have right now is because of the forces of globalisation,” Rajan said, explaining that widespread flows of capital have kept inflation and interest rates low in major economies.

Rajan was speaking at the launch of the International Monetary Fund’s semi-annual World Economic Outlook, which noted protectionist sentiment is on the rise in the United States and Europe.

“Economic patriotism is protectionist old wine in a mislabelled new bottle, but it is all the more dangerous in an interconnected world,” the chief economist said.

“People tend to dismiss these are minor frictions — sand in the gears of the globalisation juggernaut. History, however, suggests the distance from economic patriotism to unbridled nationalist is a short one,” he warned.—AFP