Political Contours of Wto

THE Chairman Coordination of the FPCCI Raza Khan was perfectly right when he stated that refusal by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to approve trade concessions offered by the European Union to Pakistan has made it more political and controversial. The WTO was established with pious intentions for ensuring fair trade practices in a world where major powers were utilizing bilateral and multilateral trade to their advantage.

By going through various decisions of the WTO one can find that this institution too has political contours and was serving the interests of major powers and least care for the poor economies who need immediate help to overcome the financial difficulties which were not of their own making. If one takes the example of Pakistan, it suffered massive economic and human losses in the international war on terror. According to rough estimates the economic loss alone was around $ 70 billion and after a great deal of persuasion by the Pakistani leadership, the European Union agreed to give it trade concessions to compensate for some of the losses. Some of the Asian countries including India, which claims to be emerging as a major economy after China, raised objections on the ground that the concessions would affect its exports. Even after agreeing to Pakistani demand, the EU stated that the additional earnings made by it through exports would be considered as aid from the group to Pakistan. The EU concessions have to be approved and the WTO has come out with different objections. This was not the first time that the organisation raised objections at this deal but in the past as well it towed the lines of major powers by identifying certain hidden dimensions to justify its position. The fact is that not only the WTO but other similar organisations, even the IMF and World Bank, extend loans apparently to help the developing countries but if one goes deep, he finds that there are many hidden conditionalities to be fulfilled by the recipient country....