Examination of Witnesses(Questions 1-19)
TUESDAY 4 FEBRUARY 2003
PROFESSOR ADRIAN
WOOD, DR
ELAINE DRAGE
AND MR
IAN NEWTON
Chairman
1. Thank you very much for coming to give evidence
today. This is the first session of an inquiry we are doing on
development and trade. The purpose of this inquiry, which I suspect
is going to take a number of weeks, is to try to have a better
understanding of just what inhibitors, what barriers exist, which
prevent developing countries from benefiting more from their own
natural resources and trade. As a Committee what we are trying
to do is to move to specific instances, specific barriers, specific
policy inhibitors which could be changed rather than a generalised
discussion about how terrible it is that the North is doing well
and the South is doing badly and so on and so forth. In today's
session we are effectively trying to discover the government's
collective line to take on a number of issues. You represent DEFRA,
DTI and DFID. We have not done this before; I am afraid it is
the first time this has happened. What you have in front of you
is our examination paper. It is going to be slightly confusing
for those at the back of the room who are going to have to guess
what the questions were. We thought that, rather than reading
out the questions and inviting you to reply, we would go down
questions one, two and three, because what we are really after
is your line to take on these issues. By giving you the questions
in advance, you can also give some thought as to who is the lead
on each question. We must leave it to you to decide whether departments
want to add a supplementary gloss. Then when we come to the end
of each section, colleagues may well have supplementaries. Does
that make sense? Those at the back can then try to guess what
the questions were, dependent on the answers. Is everyone happy
about what we are doing?
(Professor Wood) We shall give it a try.
2. For those at the back at the room, the first
lot of questions are about UK Government's policies, objectives,
prospects and policy processes. It is key components of the development
round. Why UK trade policy does not include as an objective "To
increase the ability of developing countries to make genuine and
well-informed policy choices in the sphere of trade" and
how DFID, DEFRA, DTI and the FCO work together on trade policy?
Dr Drage, would you like to lead on the first question as it is
trade round and I suspect DTI take the lead on that today?
(Dr Drage) May I ask my colleague from DFID just to
do a very short introduction. I know you do not like long introductions.
(Professor Wood) I should like to say that my Secretary
of State very much welcomes this inquiry and she very much looks
forward to appearing before the Committee at a later date, so
indeed does Patricia Hewitt, her Cabinet colleague. I should perhaps
explain that I am Chief Economist in DFID. Elaine is the Director
for Trade and Development in the Europe and World Trade Directorate
of the DTI. She works both on the Doha development agenda and
on the EU's bilateral agreements with developing countries. Ian
Newton from DEFRA is from their international trade team and his
particular area of experience is the WTO agreement on agriculture.
3. Thank you; we are grateful to all of you
and we appreciate that this is a complex area involving a whole
number of government departments working together and indeed others
which are not here like FCO and so on. Dr Drage, question one.
[Question 1: What does the Government see as the key components
of a "development round"? What are the prospects of
a genuine "development round" being concluded, and what
are the key obstacles to such an outcome? ]
(Dr Drage) May I set you a starter for ten? This is
the government's globalisation White Paper from two years' ago[9]It
is a very thorough survey, agreed by all the key departments involved
in development, as to what this government wants to get out of
trade and development. I would recommend that to you very strongly;
you have probably all read it already.
4. I think it has been compulsory bedtime reading
for most of us.
(Dr Drage) And for officials too. That remains the
basis of the government's policy. Put briefly: what does the government
want to get out of the development round? We are very conscious
that to reduce poverty in many developing countries around the
world it is important that they increase trade and that means
increasing access to the developed countries of the world in particular.
That is very true in the agriculture area, which no doubt my colleague
from DEFRA will say more on. What we want to do there, in line
with the commitments in the Doha development agenda, is to see
that export subsidies are reduced with a view to phasing out—to
quote the immortal wording—that domestic subsidies are reduced
and that tariffs are reduced, in terms of the UK's use, as significantly
as we possibly can get out of this round to increase access as
much as possible for developing countries. That is clearly a most
important target, because for many developing countries agricultural
exports are the prime thing they are likely to benefit from first
with any trade opening. We must not forget that there are still
targets also in terms of manufactured goods and services. We want
to see tariffs on those reduced, we want to see tariff peaks reduced
and a lot of those tariff peaks are in areas where there is potentially
comparative advantage for developing countries like textiles,
clothing, footwear, steel on the manufactured goods side and a
lot of agricultural products. We are very concerned to see that
the issues of tariff escalation are dealt with which means that
the more a primary product has added value to it the higher the
tariff gets and that is a key factor in preventing diversification,
which is also important for developing countries trying to grow
their way out of poverty. That is the key basis of agriculture
and tariffs. There is a whole range of other issues, to do with
intellectual property. The government is very keen, like the rest
of the EU, to see that the agenda is broadened, so that the so-called
new issues of investment, competition, trade facilitation, government
procurement, are negotiated on more actively after Cancun and
that is because we believe that for all those four issues there
are considerable potential gains for developing countries. It
will mean they have more transparent and stable systems which
will attract in investment, which will ensure the better that
the benefits of trade liberalisation do trickle down within their
economies and that is why the government will continue to argue,
not always with a receptive audience, I have to say, that these
four issues are worth taking forward in terms of the round. I
am sure I have forgotten something but those are the main facts.
5. Professor Wood, would you like to have a
crack at question two? [Question 2: The international development
community, with DFID as an influential player, emphasises the
importance of developing countries taking responsibility for their
own development, improving their domestic governance and increasing
the accountability of governments to citizens. This message was
re-iterated most clearly in the Monterrey Consensus of March 2002.
Why then, doesn't UK trade policy include as an objective: "To
increase the ability of developing countries to make genuine and
well-informed policy choices in the sphere of trade"?]
(Professor Wood) Yes, I would. Perhaps for the benefit
of those sitting behind me, let me just say that the question
is: why does UK trade policy not include as an objective "To
increase the ability of developing countries to make genuine and
well informed policy choices in the sphere of trade"? The
answer is that I think it does. We do not actually use that particular
form of words anywhere, but a very important plank of our policies
and activities is what we call trade capacity building. In sheer
financial terms we made a commitment in the White Paper to double
the amount that we were going to put into this; in effect over
the period 1998-04 to put £45 million into trade capacity
building initiatives of one kind or another. We have already committed
about £38 million, so we have made quite a lot of headway
in this direction. This money has gone partly into multilateral
initiatives, of which probably the most significant one is the
Integrated Framework, which I can tell you more about if you like,
but has also gone into a wide range of other activities, including
important activities in Geneva such as the Advisory Centre on
WTO Law, which we support. We see this as a very, very important
objective, not just in terms of negotiations in Geneva, but also
in terms of developing countries integrating trade policy into
their own development strategies. One of the features of the Integrated
Framework, one of the respects in which it is an integrating framework,
is that it encourages countries to think about how trade fits
into their poverty reduction strategies.
6. Question three is really about machinery
of government, how government departments work together and perhaps
you could just help us with machinery of government. Is there
a Cabinet sub-committee on any of this? How do officials come
together? Are there committees at officials level which then feed
up to a Cabinet sub-committee? Perhaps you could just help us
with the machinery of government issues on this. [Question
3: How do DFID, DEFRA, DTI and the FCO work together on trade
policy? Is DFID's role in trade policy similar to that which it
plays in the sphere of strategic (arms) exports?]
(Dr Drage) There is a very well-established mechanism
for working together, not just the four departments you have listed
of DFID, DEFRA, DTI and FCO, but our Treasury colleagues are also
closely involved. Our Ministers meet in the EP Committee. A sub-group
of EP is shortly to be set up which is going to monitor progress
in the round even more closely and that would be meeting for the
first time very shortly. At official level, for very many years,
going back at least four or five I understand, there is something
called the Trade Policy Group which is chaired by my Director
General in DTI. This meets about every six weeks and takes papers
on particular issues. That is the formal mechanism at which major
issues are often decided. In addition to that, on particular topics,
those of us in the particular network on the topic are in contact
with each other on a daily basis through e-mail, through meetings.
It is only if we cannot solve problems at official level that
we bring our Ministers into it in accordance with normal government
procedures. It works very smoothly and we know each other extremely
well. We can disagree amicably and we can walk onto the next bit
of business.
7. Going back to question two, if it is an objective,
how do you monitor to ensure that objective is met?
(Professor Wood) I suppose really it is observation
of the way in which developing countries are operating both in
Geneva and in the sphere of international trade negotiations.
We were all extremely pleased at the role that developing countries
played in the negotiations at Doha, which was a real step change
from anything which had been seen previously and owed something
to the capacity building which we and others had done to help
them prepare for that. I should mention that if you are interested
in knowing more about our trade capacity building work, we have
a little pamphlet of three or four pages, which lists all the
things we are doing and which I can give to members of the Committee[10]
Chairman: We should be interested to
see that.
Mr Khabra
8. The present international trading system
works to the advantage of rich countries. How do you think globalisation
can work in the interests of the countries which have poverty,
as the rich countries are dragging their feet on preparing to
change the current situation?
(Professor Wood) You are quite right to emphasise
that rich countries need to reform their own policies in order
to enable poor countries to benefit fully from trade. Indeed one
of our key objectives in the Doha round is to bring forward those
sorts of changes in rich country policies. It would also be true
to say, though, that even in the absence of changes in rich country
policies, there is scope for developing countries to benefit from
participation in world trade. We have seen a number of developing
countries over the last three or four decades which, even in a
flawed international trade system, have succeeded in making a
lot of progress towards reducing poverty by expansion of exports
and increased participation in world trade.
Chairman
9. During the Jubilee campaign which related
to debt, the NGOs and others were very much engaged and seemed,
if I might put it crudely, to be on the same side. Somehow one
gets the impression that the Trade Justice Movement, which is
an umbrella, either doubts your collective commitment, or your
collective objectives. Do you meet with NGOs and the Trade Justice
Movement to try to discuss language and policy? Otherwise a lot
of energy and time are taken up by them throwing brickbats at
Whitehall and you doubtless feeling misunderstood and unloved
and Members of Parliament sometimes getting confused as to what
the differences are about.
(Professor Wood) Our international trade department
has regular meetings with NGOs concerned with trade. These meetings
are quite often addressed by ministers; the Secretary of State
has played an active role in this. This is very good and frequent
contact. Trade and development is certainly an area in which there
are still a fair number of disagreements and precisely for that
reason, we are very interested in talking as much as possible
with our NGO colleagues. It would also be fair to say that the
areas of disagreement have actually shrunk over the last three
or four years.
(Dr Drage) It is not just DFID which rightly talks
to NGOs, my ministers welcome the dialogue they too have. On a
regular basis Baroness Symons chairs the Trade Consultative Policy
Forum which meets every eight weeks or so. We sometimes discuss
a specific topic and sometimes will range more generally, in addition
to which NGOs come in and talk to officials on a regular basis.
We welcome that dialogue as a contribution to our thinking. It
is also an opportunity for us to inform NGOs in an informal way
where we are in the round and what some of the constraints are,
often on the objectives which we share.
Mr Colman: May I say that it would be
helpful, as this is a semi-public meeting, if members of this
Committee could know when that schedule is taking place and if
we had the time we were perhaps able to attend those meetings?
I understand they are very detailed and could advance our knowledge
of where the government's position is.
Alistair Burt
10. There are two scoping questions and they
cover a similar sort of area. Firstly, how is British interest
defined in the area in which you work? Are British interests wholly
subsumed in international aspirations or interest, or are there
distinctive British interests which you are required to look for
in the work which you do? Are British interests different in different
types of activity? Are they different in the agricultural field
from the manufacturing field, for example? Could you give us some
sense of this?
(Dr Drage) The way certainly the Department of Trade
and Industry and I think the government more generally look at
these issues is yes, you have to consider whether you have an
important national issue, say if you are going to reduce tariffs
on footwear, what the implications would be in the UK and for
employment in certain areas of the UK. You need to take that into
account and to balance it with the poverty reduction which might
result in certain exporting countries, like Pakistan. It is for
government and ministers to balance those interests in the same
way that they do in a whole range of other policies. Yes, it is
right and proper for the government to look at what the more narrow,
domestic interests are on all these issues, but then they have
to place it in the wider context and, equally, balance the short-term
gains and losses with the longer-term gains and losses and not
just look at the immediate issue. I know that is a point Patricia
Hewitt made very strongly in a speech she made in Brussels last
week, which members of the Committee will either have just had
or will very shortly be having from my Secretary of State[11]
(Mr Newton) The same goes for my department.
We have an agenda for agriculture, but part of that agenda is
focused on the implications for developing countries. If I might
add, we also meet regularly with NGOs and we share the information
we receive and impart to those NGOs with the other departments
here represented.
11. My second question was to ask a little bit
about the areas of conflict and disagreement between departments;
even though we understand the common objective, all of us who
have sat on ministerial committees understand that departments
do have their issues. It would be helpful if you could spell out
what the main areas of disagreement are which you come across
most regularly and have to overcome.
(Dr Drage) It is often a question not so much of the
substance of the issue, but the tactics of how you get to an objective
which is shared. Is it right to push and shove hard on EU policy
at this point or is it better to wait? The same question goes
to WTO. My experience over the last two and a half years, when
I have had the privilege of doing this job, is that it is actually
tactics which we disagree on rather than the substance of where
we want to get.
(Professor Wood) I would say that in so far as there
is disagreement over substance, it comes back really to what Elaine
was saying earlier about the need to strike balances between gains
and losses and short-term and long-term considerations. Necessarily
DFID is going to attach more weight to benefits for poor people
in poor countries than other Whitehall departments. It is a matter
of balance. I have been in DFID a relatively short time, two and
a half years, and I have been very struck by the degree to which
there is a shared view of a lot of these issues, much more so
than I would have expected coming in from the outside.
(Mr Newton) I am not sure whether the question was
related to areas of disagreement with developing countries or
within Europe or what?
Chairman: Nuances between Whitehall departments.
Alistair Burt
12. Absolutely; in general where you are most
likely to clash and Elaine has answered that question perfectly
effectively.
(Mr Newton) For my part I can only add that I have
never been in a job where I have had so much inter-relationship
with other departments in Whitehall and it works very well.
Chris McCafferty
13. How does the trade policy group see the
empowerment of women as an objective in itself? I am thinking
particularly of grants, start-up money, seed corn to help the
women start small businesses, a lot of Africa is ravaged now with
HIV, women are in charge, head of households and in some countries
have always worked in the fields anyway. I know that for DFID
it is clearly a very important issue, but I was wondering about
the group as a whole.
(Professor Wood) As you rightly say, gender is a key
dimension of DFID policy. Most of the things which would be beneficial
to women in the area of trade are really the same things which
would be beneficial in other areas. When we are talking about
trade, we are talking about international trade, but actually
the great bulk of trade in the common sense of the word is within
countries, and enabling women to participate in production and
commerce is very central. There has been a certain amount of analysis
of the differential impact by gender of trade changes in developing
countries, some research in which I personally have been involved.
What comes out of that work, which really reinforces what I was
saying before, is that there are very few distinctive things that
you would want to do to support women in the context of international
trade than in the context of domestic production or trade.
(Dr Drage) Gender is an issue we perhaps have not
thought enough about in the specifically trade policy sense. I
went to see the National Commission on Women only yesterday to
talk about it. We would acknowledge that when we published the
consultation document on GATS three or four months ago now, we
should have put a section in on the gender effect of that and
that is an area where we need to think a bit more broadly about
it. I would add of course that a disproportionate number of women
and children are amongst the world's very poor, so actions which
you take to relieve poverty should benefit women disproportionately.
Chairman
14. Let us move on to trade, trade policy and
poverty reduction. Question four, models of the relationship between
trade, trade policy and poverty reduction. Professor Wood, would
you like to start the batting on that? These questions are both
aimed at the extent to which there is a trickle-down impact on
trade policy to helping poor people. [Question 4: What
is the UK Government's model of the relationship between trade,
trade policy, and poverty reduction? What assumptions is the model
based on? What is the evidence for these assumptions? How long
is the "longer run"? Where does the modelling on which
UK-trade policy is based take place? (Treasury, DTI, DFID, OECD,
World Bank, WTO?)]
(Professor Wood) The UK Government has no formal model
in the sense of a set of equations which are written down somewhere
and which people simulate from time to time. It does have a fairly
well-defined analytical framework for thinking about it. I suppose
you can divide it into two parts: one is the impact of trade on
growth. The aggregate per capita income growth in developing countries.
The other is the degree to which growth in average per capita
income translates into gains for poor people within those countries.
Sometimes this distinction is not a very important one, because
in very poor countries, most people are poor, so there is a strong
presumption that anything which accelerates growth is going to
benefit most poor people. Our view is that engagement in the world
economy is good for growth, and the main long-run reason for believing
this is that increased exposure to international trade provides
channels through which flows from the global pool of knowledge
enter a country. A lot of developing countries are poor because
they are technologically very backward. One of the most important
channels for international technology transfer is international
business linkages of one kind or another. In the long run that
is what we think is the main link between increased openness to
trade and increased growth. Trade policy is part of what is needed
to expand trade, but I would emphasise that it is only part of
it. If you look at the reasons why, for example, many African
countries are so little involved in world trade, it is not to
do with trade policies in the ordinary sense, either in their
countries or in other countries, but with inadequate transport
infrastructure, causing very high transport costs. That is a very
important component to think about in the policy context as well.
On the issue of the translation of growth into poverty reduction:
there are two dimensions to this. One is what increased exposure
to trade does to the distribution of income and inequality? What
we know from theory and evidence is that the effects are very
mixed. It depends very much on the country, on the particular
set of resources it has, on its starting point in terms of level
of development. On average the effect appears to be in neither
one direction nor the other, but there is quite wide variance
around that average. We understand some of the reasons why that
variance exists quite well, others we do not. I said there was
a second dimension which it is very important to bear in mind,
which is that even if the overall income distribution does not
change, beneath the surface of that unchanging inequality there
is going to be a lot of turbulence. You could have a situation
where you have gainers and losers who on average roughly cancel
out in terms of numbers, so you do not see any impact, on the
degree of inequality. Nonetheless, there are losers as well as
gainers. That is something which is unavoidable. Development is
all about change, change is all about very mixed effects and trade
is one very important component of that. We do believe that we
can do something to mitigate potential adverse effects on poor
people both in the first sense I was talking about, increased
inequality, and in the second sense of turbulence which causes
there to be losers. In particular, to use a phrase which comes
out of the book by Alan Winters and others to which we referred
in the written evidence, "predict, pre-empt and protect".
Before you do anything which is going to increase the exposure
of a low income country to trade, try to predict what the impact
is going to be on particular groups of poor people. It is not
easy, but possible to make some headway. To pre-empt means try
to take measures which mean that in advance you have already set
in train policies and processes which will in particular enable
groups of poor people who are potential losers to shift easily
into other lines of activities. To protect is really development
of a system of social protection which prevents those who, for
one reason or another, cannot shift into other lines of activities,
from suffering too badly. That is the philosophy.
Mr Walter
15. I am interested in what Professor Wood says.
If we go back to this orange-coloured brief, Save the Children
noted the UNCTAD analysis which was that extensive trade liberalisation
amongst least developed countries during the 1990s has been associated
with rising poverty and dramatic rises in poverty for those countries
which have liberalised most. This brings me to some of the words
you were using, when you said that there can be losers and in
fact that is in your brief to us. Just a moment ago you were using
the words "protection" and "mitigation". Should
we not be looking more at having liberalisation alongside some
other form of trade policy? Trade promotion—may I use those
words—is where we should be focused rather than just saying
we have opened up the market, now guys it is up to you.
(Professor Wood) That is a very good way to put it.
I was mentioning to Mr Khabra the gains which developing countries
have experienced from trade and I particularly emphasised expansion
of exports. Most poor people are poor because they do not produce
very much. Expansion of exports associated with expansion of production
is actually the way to make them better off. Increased liberalisation
in the sense of increased access to imports can also be quite
helpful in that process because you need to import large quantities
of producer goods in order to be able to expand production rapidly.
Indeed many poor people gain from access to cheaper consumer goods
of one kind and another. You are absolutely right that trade promotion
is in a way a much better phrase than trade liberalisation in
terms of encapsulating the philosophy of what we are trying to
do.
16. What are we doing in that respect?
(Professor Wood) We are trying to tackle some of the
barriers to exports in particular countries. One of the obstacles
to involvement of African countries in trade is poor infrastructure.
We encourage countries in their poverty reduction strategies to
focus on reducing those barriers. Fundamentally we are simply
trying to encourage expansion of production by encouraging countries
to provide a better enabling environment for business. At the
end of the day it is going to be expansion of private production
which is going to create growth and lift countries out of poverty.
We are trying to encourage poor countries to overcome a wide range
of things which currently are discouraging investment in poor
countries. That is fundamentally how we are going about it.
(Dr Drage) I suspect you are also thinking about the
issues of how we are using UK aid money to help grow entrepreneurship
in a number of developing countries. I know one or two projects
which DFID certainly have in South Africa and there is something
going in Ghana. Things are happening on the ground in terms of
growing the entrepreneurship. If you like, trade policy is about
trying to open the door so that countries can export, but you
need to grow that entrepreneurship to help them walk through that
door and come into a better and richer world.
17. What I am trying to home in on in a simplistic
way is that trade liberalisation means that the guys from Coca-Cola
can go and set up their marketing department in less developed
countries but the entrepreneurs in the less developed country
do not necessarily have even the know-how or the resources to
market outside their own country.
(Dr Drage) That is a very important point. What often
happens, if you look at the issue of green beans from Kenya, which
you will find in many of the supermarkets you go into, is that
you need to encourage partnerships with the big buyer in developed
countries to assist producers in poor countries to cope with what
are often rather high standards for health and safety, hygiene
and packaging so they can take the opportunities of reduced tariff
barriers. Addressing the non-tariff barriers is almost as important
as addressing the tariff barriers in the context of the round.
Mr Khabra
18. I am sure you are aware of the impact of
liberalisation on the interests of small businesses and small
farmers, in India in particular. Would you agree that there has
to be a balance drawn between liberalisation and the interests
of small farmers or small businesses? The gap between the rich
and the poor has not been shortened in any way, it has been widened.
The effect of liberalisation on the Indian economy has been a
bulging of the middle class who are getting more and more money
but the poor are still poor.
(Professor Wood) India is a subject in which I personally
am keenly interested and it is a country in which DFID is keenly
interested because one third of the world's dollar-a-day poor
are in India. The potential impact of trade liberalisation is
very important to us. My own view is that what India needs most
in order to reduce poverty is expansion of large-scale manufacturing
for export in the same way that the East Asian countries have
done. India has a potentially very strong comparative advantage
in the production of garments, footwear and similar kinds of activities.
What is striking about India is how incredibly small the formal
manufacturing sector is. In the late 1990s, there were more unemployed
manufacturing workers in China than there were employed manufacturing
workers in India. India needs to do things which will cause tens
of millions of people to move out of small-scale agriculture and
small-scale non-agricultural activities into factories. The main
things it needs to do are to improve its infrastructure and to
reduce the bureaucracy which makes it very hard for Indian businessmen
to do business abroad and for foreign businessmen to do business
in India. Elaine was mentioning the role of, for example, UK supermarkets
in sourcing green beans from Kenya, but if you look at labour-intensive
manufactures like clothing and footwear, the key to success for
low income countries is to get into international supply chains
there as well. International buyers, for example of footwear,
are very reluctant to engage with India. They would rather go
to Vietnam, just because of the cost and difficulty of getting
intermediate inputs into India and getting the final product out
of India, particularly in any kind of just-in-time consumer quality
oriented supply chain.
Mr Colman
19. May I say that I hope later in our investigation
we will actually invite the major UK retailers here to talk to
us because they offer the major way to take many of the poor of
the world out of their poverty? It is something I was involved
in prior to coming to this House. I want to take us back to the
overall pattern of this, which is the big overview and the area
of modelling. Sorry to come back to you, Elaine, but you almost
have three groups modelling. You have WTO, you have the World
Bank and you have UNCTAD; UNCTAD seen as pro-poor and WTO and
the World Bank seen as pro-rich. Is there any sort of work going
on to try to get a common model of approach? I know it is difficult,
difficult for the UK economy, as the Treasury Select Committee
finds out every month, but is there any attempt to try to bring
these three together to enable lay people like ourselves to have
some idea of the reality of the situation?
(Professor Wood) The World Bank would be mortified
at your description of them as pro-rich. They see their mission
as being entirely pro-poor. There are no big differences in their
modelling work in terms of the analytical frameworks or the approaches
which are taken by the Bank as compared with UNCTAD or WTO. I
know the UNCTAD people very well. A lot of the differences are
differences in emphasis, in the interpretation of results. If
you look at what numbers come out of this analysis in terms of
particular countries or particular sectors and who gains and who
loses through patterns of trade liberalisation, it is not particularly
controversial. Everybody works around an increasingly widely-used
international system of modelling called GTAP, which is a US-based
network of modellers with models in virtually every country and
most international organisations are plugged into the GTAP framework.
One can take a particular set of model results and look at the
numbers from the either half-full perspective or the half-empty
perspective. Many of the differences between the UNCTAD interpretation
and the World Bank interpretation boil down essentially to what
kind of spin you put on the numbers which are coming out rather
than any kind of fundamental difference in how they think the
world works.
9 Eliminating World Poverty: Making Globalisation Work
for the Poor', White Paper on International Development, CM
5006, published December 2000. Back
10
Further information to follow. Back
11
"Trade and Development: Europe's Role in Spreading Prosperity",
speech made by the Rt Hon Patricia Hewitt MP, Secretary of State
for Trade and Industry at the European Parliament on 21st January
2003. Back
|
