ISLAMABAD: Trade czar, the Director General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Roberto Azevedo, starts a two-day visit to Pakistan on Monday on the invitation of Pakistan.
He is the first WTO chief who is undertaking the trip after twelve years. The government’s economic managers are highlighting his visit as symbolic expression of confidence by world economic troika in Pakistan’s economic policies.
Roberto Azevedo would meet Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Commerce Minister Khurram Dastgir and Planning, Development and Reforms Minister Ahsan Iqbal and would address private sector representative and students and academia at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), an official told The News.
He will meet key policymakers of the federal and provincial government, private sector and academia. During his visit, the WTO chief will brief key stakeholders of Pakistan economy about future direction of trade negotiations especially agriculture.
He would discuss concerns of key Pakistani domestic stakeholders like agriculture commodity exporters particularly rice and citrus and cotton. Roberto Azevedo will discuss in detail China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) since it is a great future hope for Pakistan economy and regional trade.
He will speak at the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) WTO seminar being attended by representatives of ten nations. It is key event in line with vision of Pakistani policy to make Pakistan a regional trade and business hub.
The WTO is a key member of Bretton Wood Institutions, other two being World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Incidentally, another key member of global economic troika, the President of the World Bank, also visited Islamabad last month, with successful completion of IMF extended fund facility.
Roberto Azevedo, an accomplished Brazilian trade diplomat, is the ninth WTO head elected to the high office through consensus in May 2013. He has a distinguished diplomatic career. He was previously Brazil’s Ambassador to WTO.
When he took office, the WTO was faced with many challenges. The Doha Development Round of negotiations was stalled for over 12 years; and key members were negotiating outside WTO. He successfully faced the immense challenge of rescuing the WTO and multilateral trading system from irrelevance.
Roberto Azevedo successfully piloted the consensus at the eleventh hour in the ninth Bali Ministerial in 2013 for the Trade Facilitation Agreement. It was a great feat to forge agreement of 159 hugely divided members of WTO.
He was again instrumental in making 162 members agree in Nairobi Ministerial last December for abolition of export subsidies and to second phase of Information Technology Agreement. Under his leadership the WTO has accomplished two successful summits. He has succeeded in proving the skeptics wrong who were calling WTO irrelevant.
Through his leadership, he has proved that WTO is still in business. But he still faces
the large challenge to bring vitality in the organization in face of competition from mega regional trade pacts like TPP-
Trans Pacific Partnership and TTIP Trans-Atlantic trade and investment pact. Under Roberto Azevedo’s leadership the shaken confidence of members specially developing members in multilateral system and WTO has been revived.
He instilled fresh energy in the WTO secretariat, and gave special emphasis to Trade Policy Review and Trade Dispute Mechanisms. More resources were allocated for technical assistance to less developing countries.