GENEVA, Nov 5: World trade is expected to grow a weak three per cent this year, unchanged from 2002, the World Trade Organization said on Wednesday, prompting WTO chief Supachai Panitchpakdi to call for an urgent relaunch of global trade talks.

The forecast was at the upper end of a prediction of two-to-three per cent expansion in the volume of global goods trade for 2003 made in April by WTO experts, but it represented just half the figure enjoyed in the 1990s.

“Weak fourth-quarter growth (last year) and the near stagnation of trade flows in the first half of 2003 have diminished hopes for a rapid recovery in world trade figures,” the organization said in a report, WTO International Trade Statistics 2003.

The feeble performance of three-per cent trade growth in 2002 and equally weak prospects this year reinforced the need for WTO members to kick-start the latest Doha round of trade negotiations, according to the director general.

“The world’s political leaders must focus their attention on the stalled Doha Development Agenda and demonstrate their willingness to spur the global economy through greater trade liberalization and more equitable trade rules,” Supachai said in a statement.

“The near-stagnation of trade growth in the first half of 2003 underlines the urgency for governments to get back to the negotiating table and to work towards building a stronger and more vibrant trading system.”

WTO ministers gathered in Cancun, Mexico in September in a bid to breathe life into moribund trade-liberalization talks that were launched in the Qatari capital of Doha on November 2001 and were due to conclude by January 1, 2005.

But the meeting collapsed after bickering over cross-border investment and competition added to a more fundamental dispute about farm subsidies in richer states and the high tariffs on agriculture imports from developing nations.

Delegates to Cancun nonetheless agreed on a December 15 target for a consensus on how to revive the Doha round.

In the WTO’s latest report, it said improved data from the world’s largest economies led it to opt for the top end of its previous projection for 2003.

Growth in the US economy — the largest in the world — shot to a 19-year record 7.2 per cent pace in the July-September quarter.

In the first half of the year, the WTO said global merchandise exports rose 15 per cent in dollar terms from the same period in 2002, due largely to a drop in the value of the greenback against the euro and yen.—AFP