Skip to main content

World Trade Agreements

Volume 406: debated on Tuesday 3 June 2003

The text on this page has been created from Hansard archive content, it may contain typographical errors.

To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what action her Department is taking to recognise the needs of (a) sub-Saharan African countries and (b) Indo-Chinese countries in world trade agreements. [114615]

We support an approach to the current WTO negotiations that recognises that WTO Members are at different stages of development and have different capacities to implement WTO rules. To help countries manage their commitments, we are pressing for Special and Differential Treatment provisions to be real and binding and for any new WTO rules to reflect countries implementation capacities.The EU already offers duty and quota free access to all Least Developed. Countries (LDC), of which 34 are in sub-Saharan Africa. The EU is currently negotiating new Economic Partnership Agreements with all ACP countries, including 14 non LDC ACP countries in Africa. The UK is pushing for the EU to offer ACP countries duty and quota free access to EU markets as a result of these negotiations.Cambodia and Laos as Laces already benefit from EBA and Vietnam receives access to EU under GSP. The UK is a strong supporter of these countries efforts to accede to the WTO. WTO members have recently agreed, following up the Doha Declaration, to simplify the accession route for LDCs. My Department continues to be actively involved in this process in consultation with DfID and other relevant Whitehall Departments.