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Japan unveils aid package ahead of WTO

Published 11 December 2005

TOKYO: Japan will provide $10 billion in trade-related aid to least-developed countries over three years, the government said on Friday, in a bid to help infuse momentum into key global trade negotiations. In an aid package unveiled ahead of World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks in Hong Kong next week, Japan also said it would provide duty-free, quota-free market access for “essentially all products” originating from least-developed countries (LDCs).

“This is just a start. This is a package aimed at the success of the Doha round,” Farm Minister Shoichi Nakagawa told a news conference. The number of LDC products Japan currently provides duty-free preferential treatment to, amounts to roughly 86 percent, Kyodo news agency said.

The package was put together as part of a previous Japanese pledge to add $10 billion to its overseas aid over the next five years, which was announced at a summit of Group of Eight industrialised nations in Gleneagles, Scotland in July.

Besides increasing preferential market access for LDCs, Japan will employ soft loans, grant aid and technical help to improve trade, production and distribution infrastructure as well as to train personnel, the government said in a statement.

“There will be an exchange of a total of 10,000 trainees and experts in these fields,” it said.

The WTO’s Doha trade round was launched four years ago in Qatar with the aim of lifting hundreds of millions of people in the developing world out of poverty through increased trade.

Divisions among WTO members on farm trade have dampened expectations for ministerial talks next week in Hong Kong, originally meant to agree a draft treaty but downgraded because of rows over subsidies and market access.

Japan’s package was unveiled at a time when the European Union (EU) has been pushing for a deal at next week’s WTO meeting, which would require all industrial nations to provide unrestricted access to products from LDCs.

Source: Reuters