De Armen en Berooiden

Common Dreams bericht: 'Poorest Nations Hit Hardest by WTO Agenda, Study Finds. WASHINGTON - According to "Winners and Losers" by Sandra Polaski, a researcher with the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the so-called Doha Development Round, which launched the current trade World Trade Organisation talks, will not actually generate development benefits for poor nations as initially promised. “There are both net winners and net losers under different scenarios, and the poorest countries are among the net losers under all likely Doha scenarios," says the study. While critics of the 149-member World Trade Organisation (WTO) have long argued the same point, the findings of the report bolster their position even as the world's richest nations aggressively pursue new markets. The 116-page study is based on unemployment models in developing countries that separate agricultural labour markets from urban unskilled labour markets. Polaski, a former State Department trade official, worked with a team headed by Zhi Wang, a renowned statistical modeler who also previously worked for the U.S. government. She discussed their conclusions in Washington on Wednesday. Polaski's main finding is that free trade will produce only modest gains at the global level, on the order of a one-time rise in world income of between 40 to 60 billion dollars, or an increase of less than 0.2 percent of current global gross domestic product (GDP). The report says that the adjustment costs to which countries expose themselves when they commit to the free trade policies promoted by the industrialised nations could in fact be greater than the benefits.' Lees verder: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0316-03.htm