Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz will preside over an important meeting of the Economic Coordination Committee of the Cabinet on December 6 to finalise Pakistan''s policy and recommendations for the forthcoming crucial WTO Hong Kong conference, Commerce Secretary Asif Shah said here on Saturday.
Addressing a symposium organised by Parliamentarians Commission for Human Rights, Global Trust for Human Rights and Consultant Sans Frontier, he said that Commerce Ministry would give a presentation to ECC about the policy/strategy formulated by the government through inter-ministerial meetings/consultations in the greatest national interest.
He said that Pakistan delegation at the WTO Hong Kong conference would get approval of the Prime Minister and the ECC before presenting these proposals at the international Ministerial Conference. "Pakistan will follow a proactive policy to impress upon the developed countries to provide level playing field to our agriculture sector by reducing tariffs and access to their markets which would help us increase our exports" he said.
The Chairperson of the PCHR, Kishmala Tariq, MNA, said that through such symposia, the government was trying to get inputs from the experts--businessmen, farmers, industrialists, media and civil society--as a whole in an effort to take all stakeholders on board to formulate a national policy in the WTO regime.
However MNA Mujib Peerzada of PPPP said that all vital policies were being formulated by the civil and military bureaucracy without taking the Parliament into confidence or holding any discussion on such crucial issues in the Parliament. "Agriculture is the most neglected sector in Pakistan, which provides subsistence to nearly 70 percent population, but the farming community has never been consulted in the formulation of WTO related policies," he said.
Experts said that for millions of farmers in developing countries, agriculture is not commerce but subsistence and its link to development is recognised by everyone which is not possible without removal of anti development distortions in international agricultural trade.
They pointed out that through a combination of high tariffs, massive domestic support and export subsidies, industrial countries retain inefficient agricultural production in their economies at the cost of agricultural development in developing countries.
A research paper by Consultant Sans Frontier (CSF) lamented that two-thirds of all poor people in developing countries live and work in the agricultural sector, depending on agriculture for their livelihood. In contrast, agriculture accounted for less than 5 percent of output and employment in the EU and the US.
For some developing countries, as in the case of West African cotton producers of Mali, Benin, Chad and Burkina Fasco, high subsidies for rich farmers in developed countries are responsible for the devastation of the livelihood of millions of poor farmers.
Pakistan, a member of Cairns Group, G-20, and G-33 , wants maximum possible reduction in tariff as its agro-based SMEs in food processing, preservation and packaging, fruit and vegetable sectors are to gain immensely with market access. Pakistan calls for preference in quota allocation for developing countries in sensitive products.