MURREE, Sept 9: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Friday urged the developed world to reduce tariffs and stop subsidies while giving a clear timetable to make the gains of globalization more equitable. “We cannot have a selective global trade agenda which is tilted,” the prime minister told agriculture ministers of G-20 countries here at the President’s House.

He said that developed countries were not providing a level-playing field despite pledges. “They are continuing giving subsidies to their farmers and imposing higher tariffs on items from under-developed countries.”

“We are committed to a free trade in its truest sense (and) developing countries can only meet the millennium development goals if they can gain greater market access to developed countries,” he added.

The prime minister pointed out that globalization had added new characteristics to these challenges through new markets, new tools, new rules and innovative and dynamic framework.

“It is creating interdependencies and linkages between countries of the world, their markets, and their people manifested in flows, and concentration of corporate power,” he added.

Mr Aziz said that subsidies by the industrialized world were providing a competitive advantage to their producers irrespective of their efficiency to compete because of mechanization.

“However, if globalization has to stay, the opportunities and benefits it offers needed to be shared much more widely.”

The G-20 ministerial meeting at Bhurban is taking place at a crucial time, as negotiations on the Doha Round Agenda enter the last phase. The G-20 has given new dynamism to trade negotiations at the World Trade Organization, as its members account for 65 per cent of the world’s population, of which 72 per cent are farmers and have a 22 per cent share in agriculture output.

The prime minister said the G-20 had a responsibility to ensure that the decision taken at the Doha summit of a timetable for gradual withdrawal of subsidies was met. He, however, warned that otherwise all free trade agenda would collapse.

He pointed out that the last meeting of the G-20 had already called for elimination of all export subsidies in agriculture within five years and substantial reduction in trade distorting measures.—APP