As the push toward neoliberalism advances, and quantitative measures to protect local markets, such as tariffs and quotas, disappear, industrial powers are turning to qualitative measures such as food safety regulations to further skew trade in their favour. In the food safety arena, both the US and the EU are pressing their standards on other countries. For Washington, even though its own food safety system is widely criticised as too lax, this means getting countries to accept GMOs and US meat safety inspections. For Brussels, whose food safety standards have a much better reputation, it means imposing high standards on countries that cannot meet them. Bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) have become a tool of choice to push through the changes.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
The Foresight Africa, African Growth Initiative invited scholars and experts to delve into six overarching themes that highlight areas in which African countries and their citizens are taking the lead to achieve inclusive growth. In a world where China and other emerging economies are ascendant, where cooperation on global governance is under challenge, and where free trade faces headwinds, Africa is argued to need its own institutions to play a more assertive role in advancing the continent’s agenda. The report emphasizes that Africa’s future lies in its own hands and that it already has the power to reach its goals. The authors describe, and argue for, new and innovative instruments to better mobilize and leverage resources for development financing. They authors explore and offer recommendations on policy interventions to broaden the benefits of future economic growth. Further chapters explore technological innovations and their potential to transform the continent. The final chapter explores a shifting global landscape of diplomacy – what will the impact of reduced engagement from the United States be? How do development, defence, and diplomacy best fit into foreign policies toward the continent?
African Trade Network which brings together Civil Society Organisation dealing with trade in Africa expressed their concern that while there is wide-spread recognition of the dangers posed by EPAs to the economies and peoples of the ACP countries, this has not yet led to fundamental changes in the design of the EPAs and the process of negotiations. Instead the EC simply adopted new rhetoric to continue to impose its parameters, agenda and momentum on African and other ACP groups. It is against this background that this statement of theirs was issued.
Consistent availability and access to medicines in low- and middle-income countries is a challenge. As a result, the governments in these countries have shown increasing interest in local pharmaceutical production as a means of promoting technology transfer, building capacity and improving access to essential medicines. In Nigeria, the Five Plus Five-Year Validity (Migration to Local Production) policy aims to reduce the number of pharmaceutical products imported into Nigeria and encourage local production of essential medicines. The Five Plus policy follows a fiscal policy measure implemented since 2016 which reduced the import adjustment tax under the Economic Community of West African States Common External Tariff on pharmaceutical raw materials from 5–20% to 0% and imposed a 20% import adjustment tax on four groups of imported drugs that can be produced by local manufacturers, including antimalarials, antibiotics, alkaloid derivatives and vitamins. While local pharmaceutical production in some low-income countries is not viable because of limited local technical expertise or low economies of scale, this issue may not be the case in Nigeria, given its large population, huge potential market and local expertise and experience for the manufacture of essential medicines.
In this declaration from the fourth annual BRICS summit, held in March 2012, participants call for a more representative international financial architecture, with an increase in the voice and representation of developing countries and the establishment and improvement of a just international monetary system that can serve the interests of all countries and support the development of emerging economies. The declaration expresses BRICS’s concern at the slow pace of quota and governance reforms in the International Monetary Fund (IMF), calling for greater representation of developing countries by January 2013. The declaration reiterates BRICS’ position that that the heads of the IMF and the World Bank be selected through an open and merit-based process, and that Bank leadership must commit to transform the Bank into a multilateral institution that truly reflects the vision of all its members. The declaration also announces BRICS’s intention to set up a new Development Bank for mobilising resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in BRICS and other developing countries.
The authors of this study developed a generic framework which depicts the determinants and pathways connecting global trade with the rise of chronic disease in many low and middle-income countries (LMICs). They then applied this framework to three key risk factors for chronic disease: unhealthy diets, alcohol and tobacco. This led to specific 'product pathways', which can be further refined and used by health policy-makers to engage with their country's trade policy-makers around health impacts of ongoing trade treaty negotiations, and by researchers to continue refining an evidence base on how global trade is affecting patterns of chronic disease. The authors argue the need for a more concerted approach to regulate trade-related risk factors and thus more engagement between health and trade policy sectors within and between nations. An explicit recognition of the role of trade policies in the spread of non-communicable disease (NCD) risk factors should be a minimum outcome of the United Nations Summit on NCDs in September 2011, with a commitment to ensure that future trade treaties do not increase such risks.
Southern African governments have a special need to make or buy low-cost generic drugs to save their citizens. World trade rules are amenable, containing safeguards that allow countries to use generics to preserve public health. But the Bush administration is now negotiating a free trade agreement with the Southern African Customs Union. This article further discusses its implications ; that the United States should not, in the process, restrict the ability of poor people to get generic drugs in these countries.
The degree and pace of liberalisation necessary for a free-trade agreement (FTA) to comply with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules (especially Article XXIV of GATT) remains an important discussion point in EPA (economic partnership agreement) negotiations. This article helps clarify the different interpretations of Article XXIV by analysing some 40 free-trade agreements notified to the WTO, including interim EPAs. Developing countries can make proposals for flexibilities in the FTAs they negotiate with developed countries. The concept of asymmetry justifies this approach, and these flexibilities are an important means for adjusting to liberalisation that goes beyond WTO requirements. Two WTO legal texts can be used as a basis: on the one hand, the enabling clause which states that ‘contracting parties may accord differential and more favourable treatment to developing countries, without according such treatment to other contracting parties’, and, on the other hand, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), which allows some flexibility to developing countries depending on their global and sectorial and subsectorial development level. At a time when the West Africa and Central Africa EPA negotiations have stalled over provisions that would provide more flexibility, the analysis of the FTAs notified to the WTO reveals that there is room to manoeuvre. Indeed, the precedent set in some FTAs is a basis for understanding and accepting the ACP’s request to liberalise 60% – and not 80% – of their market or to benefit from a 25-year transition period.
The World Bank Group has extensive programmes in aid for trade across the spectrum of concessional lending to low-income countries through the IDA, non-concessional lending to middle-income countries through the IBRD, and private investments through the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s private sector arm. In 2008, resources transferred through these three channels amounted to some US$22 billion, more than double the annual average in 2002-2005. Increasingly, governments are requesting aid for trade from the World Bank-today nearly 70% of country programmes agreed with the governments have trade-related activities. These programmes focus predominantly on infrastructure and building productive capacity, but they also include trade facilitation and trade policy. Among low-income countries, Africa is the largest beneficiary. If aid for trade is to continue to grow, two issues are critical. First, the multilateral development banks-collectively the largest source of aid for trade-are bumping up against capital constraints and may soon see their lending effectively capped. Second, without the capital increase, countries wishing to invest more in infrastructure will be forced to reduce their borrowings for health, education or other sectors.
The paper argues that politics is central to aid effectiveness and the measures should be taken to ensure democratic ownership of citizens in recipient countries. It argues that aid must ensure mutual accountability between donors, government and citizens. Furthermore, donors need to ensure high standards of aid quality by fairly allocating aid toward poverty reduction, untying aid and limiting technical assistance, as well as ensuring predictability for recipient countries. The paper makes a number of recommendations ahead of the Accra High Level Forum on aid effectiveness, which include: donors should recognise the centrality of poverty reduction, equality and human rights; all donor-imposed policy conditionality should be ended; donors and Southern governments must adhere to the highest standards of openness and transparency; donors should recognise CSOs as development actors in their own right and acknowledge the conditions that enable them to play effective roles in development; an effective and relevant independent monitoring and evaluation system for the Paris Declaration and its impact on development outcomes should be developed; mutually agreed, transparent and binding contracts to govern aid relationships should be introduced; and new multi-stakeholder mechanisms for holding governments and donors to account should be created.