The Sixth WTO Ministerial Conference will be held in Hong Kong, China, 13–18 December2005. In general, ministerial conferences are the WTO’s highest decision-makingbody, meeting at least once every two years and providing political directionfor the organization. This sixth conference will be vital for enabling thefour-year-old Doha Development Agenda negotiations forward sufficiently to concludethe round in 2006.
Objective Of The Conference
The main task before members in Hong Kong is to settle a range of questions that willshape the final agreement of the Doha Development Agenda, which members hope tocomplete a year later, at the end of 2006. Launched at the Fourth Ministerial Conference in November 2001, the DohaDevelopment Agenda includes negotiations on a range of subjects, and work onissues related to the implementation of agreements arising from previousnegotiations (the 1986–94 Uruguay Round, which created the WTO).
For the negotiations on agriculture and non-agricultural market access, the aimis to agree on formulas and other details that will determine the scale ofreductions in tariffs on thousands of products and on farm subsidies.Also onthe agenda are preparations for the final stages of negotiations in services,various WTO rules and a number of development issues.
Previous ministerial conferences have also been occasions when governmentsapproved new members to the WTO. Some of the current talks seem likely to beconcluded before or in Hong Kong
With a traumatic implosion – economic, financial, political, and social – now taking place in Greece, we should expect heated debate about who is to blame for the country's deepening misery. There are four suspects – all of them involved in the spectacular boom that preceded what will prove to be an even more remarkable bust.
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Professor at Columbia University. Recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001 & the John Bates Clark Medal in 1979. Author of "Freefall: America, Free Markets", "The Sinking of the World Economy", "Globalisation and its Discontents" & "Making Globalisation Work".
Vice President and Director of the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings Institution. Former Turkish Minister of State for Economic Affairs. Head of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) from 2005-2009.
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