ISLAMABAD, April 9: A large contingent of parliamentarians is expected to leave for Geneva in the third week of current month to attend the WTO annual symposium, sources told Dawn on Saturday.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has arranged its Annual Public Symposium 2005 from April 20-22 in Geneva, Switzerland and according to the sources the government has selected all 22 members of the Task Force on the WTO to attend it.

The annual symposium will feature dedicated high-level work sessions on the WTO’s economic, legal and institutional functions as well as work sessions on key subjects being negotiated in the Doha Round.

The sources said the visit of the MNAs and the Senators would cost around Rs7.84 million to the national exchequer. Some of the parliamentarians, the sources said, had even submitted visa applications of their spouses to accompany them to Geneva on their own expenditure.

Further, Punjab Governor Let-Gen (Retd) Khalid Maqbool has also been selected to attend the symposium. Federal Minister for Industries and Production Jahangir Khan Tareen and two state ministers Hamid Yar Hiraj and Mir Nasir Khan Mengal are among the 22-member delegation. The only member of the task force, who has refused to go with them, is Awami National Party (ANP) Senator Asfandyar Wali Khan.

The task force was constituted in September 2003 to monitor the progress of the ongoing negotiations between WTO member countries, study its implications for Pakistan and make strategies to safeguard the interests of local stakeholders.

Interestingly, no formal meeting of the task force has been conducted so far since its establishment and no recommendatory report or proposals have been attributed to the task force so far, the sources said.

“If the task force has played no tangible role in the policy making for which it was established, then why the government is spending taxpayers’ money on sending a delegation to attend a symposium in one of the expensive city of the world”, asserted the sources.

The delegation comprises 13 members of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML), two of the PPP-Patriots and one each of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP), Pakistan People’s Party-Sherpao (PPP-S) and Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA). Those who have been selected to attend the forthcoming symposium are senators Justice (Retd) Abdul Razzaq Thahim (PML), Syed Dilawar Abbas (PML), and Dr. Nighat Agha (PML), MNAs Syed Naveed Qamar (PPP), Dr Farooq Sattar (MQM), Sardar Saleem Jan Mazari (PML), Liaquat Baloch (MMA), Ch. Imranullah (PPP-Patriots), Muhammad Pervaiz Malik (PML-N), Sardar Jaffar Khan Leghari (PML), Malik Zaheer Abbas Khokar (PPP-Patriots), Alsyed Abdul Qadir Jamaluddin Al-Gillani (PML), Sher Akbar Khan (PPP-S), Dr. Donya Aziz (PML), Ch. Haroon Qaiser (PML) and Kashmala Tariq (PML).

The participants will discuss the report of the WTO Director-General’s Consultative Board “The Future of the WTO, addressing institutional challenges in the new millennium.” Other topics include trade and development, non-agricultural market access and trade and environment.

The sources said that it was not clear that how many parliamentarians had gone through this report or kept themselves updated on the current negotiations being held in Geneva on various agreements.

“Will these parliamentarians be in a position to present impacts of various agreements on Pakistan’s economy and trade at the symposium? Excluding few member of the task force, no body has even attended any seminar on WTO related issues so far held in Islamabad by various organizations”, added the sources.