Next WTO met
in Mexico
Mexico will host the next meeting of ministers from the 144
nations of the World Trade Organization, the body decided recently.
WTO Director General Mike Moore
said the meeting would be chaired by Mexico’s Economy Minister
Luis Ernesto Derbez. "They are very confident about running
this ministerial," he said.
The decision was taken by the WTO’s
general council barely a month after the end of its last ministerial
meting in Doha, Qatar, where ministers agreed to launch a new
round of trade liberalization negotiations.
The exact location and the date
of the meeting have not been set. Under WTO rules, it must take
place by the end of 2003, but it is likely it will be earlier
in the year.
Moore declined to say when he thought
the meeting would be. "Timing is up to ministers and to members,"
he said. Among the tasks governments must face at the meeting
is deciding on whether to add additional areas to the subjects
under negotiations, and how to go about completing the round.
The Doha meeting agreed to aim to finish the talks by Jan. 1,
2005.
They may also face a rerum of some
of the problems that led in part to the collapse of the 1999
ministerial in Seattle anti WTO rioting. Campaigners claim the
WTO favors big business over poor people and is undemocratic.
WTO budget raised
by 6.75 percent
Members of the World Trade Organization
has approved a 6.75 percent increase in their annual budget
as they prepared for the start of a round of trade liberalization
negotiations.
The body’s 2002 budget was set
at just over $87 million said spokesman Keith Rockwell. In addition,
there will be $9 million to help poorer countries prepare for
the negotiations. The money will be paid by the WTO’s 143 member
governments.
Trade ministers agreed last month
to launch the new round of talks, which will last at least until
the beginning of 2004. WTO Director General Mike Moore has restructured
some of the body’s departments to take account of its new workload.
US economy to
rebound
Some economic predictions for 2002:
The U.S. economy, in recession now, will begin to rebound by
next summer; Asia will continue to struggle, but a financial
crisis is unlikely; the Euro zone’s economies will barely grow.
In Latin America, all eyes will be on Argentina.
"The economic slowdown that started
in the United States from 2000 and spilled over to other countries,
has turned into a global economic turndown," the Organisation
for Economic Cooperation and Development said in a November
report.
In its latest review, the Paris
based OECD said the world’s biggest economies will shrink by
0.3 percent in the second half of the year 2001 the first recession
in two decades. Growth among the 30 member countries would be
no more than 1 percent in 2001 and next.
The leading U.S. investment bank
Merrill Lynch predicted global growth of 1.2 percent in 2001
and 1.5 percent in 2002, down from 3.8 percent in 2000.
The after-effects of the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks, especially on the U.S. economy were being
blamed for the expected slowdown.
The International Monetary Fund,
updating its economic forecast to reflect the attacks in which
3,000 died, significantly lowered its estimates for growth in
the United States and Japan. It also slashed its expectations
for global growth to 2.4 percent both for 2001 and 2002.
The OECD forecast a strong rebound
in 2003, when the overall growth should bounce back to 3 percent.
Since the recession began, the
economy has lost about 1.2 million jobs. Nearly 800,000 of those
job losses occurred in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks,
which badly shook consumer confidence and dealt a big blow to
an already fragile economy.
US trade deficit
falls
The U.S. deficit in the broadest
measure of foreign trade fell to dlrs 94.98 billion in the July-September
quarter, the smallest in nearly two years, reflecting an American
economy in recession and huge foreign insurance payments from
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The Commerce Department said the
deficit in the current account dropped by 11.7 percent from
an April-June imbalance of dlrs 107.58 billion. That was the
smallest trade gap since a deficit of dlrs 92.47 billion in
the final quarter of 1999.
The current account is considered
the broadest measure of trade because it covers not only the
flow of goods and services across borders but also the flow
of investment and items such as foreign aid.
For all of 2000, the current account
deficit hit a record dlrs 444.7 billion, pompting concerns among
economists that unless the imbalance began to shrink the United
States could begin to have serious problems attracting the foreign
capital needed to finance such a huge deficit.
While the deficit and shrink in
the third quarter, the improvement came for all the wrong reasons
imports fell because of weakening U.S. demand, reflecting the
first recession in a decade.
Another factor helping to narrow
the deficit was a widening in American’s surplus in services
trade as a result of dlrs 11 billion in foreign insurance payments
tied to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In the government’s
accounting system, the claims that must be paid by foreign insurance
companies acted to lower the trade deficit.
