Antigua & Barbuda Spearheads Small Nations' Interests In WTO

by Amanda Banks, Tax-News.com, London

09 October 2003

Antigua and Barbuda's Chief Foreign Affairs Representative Sir Ronald Sanders led a group of eight nations at the WTO headquarters in Geneva on Monday in an attempt to persuade the organisation not to adopt recent OECD and FATF directives.

Sir Ronald expressed concern at the cost that smaller jurisdictions are paying to comply with these directives, and alarm at the way in which the larger economies are dominating the decision making process in international financial bodies such as the WTO and OECD.

"The world has entered a dangerous phase, it is one in which, despite the international problems that confront the global community and the logic that such international problems demand international solutions, a number of larger and more powerful states have abrogated to themselves the task of making rules and imposing them on others through either threat, or the impositions, of sanctions", Sanders told the Committe on Trade in Financial Services.

"The sovereign right of states to regulate and manage their crucial financial services sector is being challenged continually by some countries who appear to have usurped the role of international organizations such as the WTO in global governance", Sir Ronald continued, stating that these countries had "no legitimacy" to act in such a way.

Sanders argued that the protectionism of the financial sectors of the larger countries was harmful to non-members of the two organisations, and attacked the "coercive methods they have adopted (which) challenge a basic tenet of the WTO - namely multilateralism, which includes Most Favoured Nation treatment as well as open consultation between WTO members".

The document presented to the Committee by Sir Ronald proposed to "promote the greater inclusiveness of small states in the process of formulating these standards by placing them under the umbrella of the WTO instead of in the bosom of plurilateral organizations with limited membership." It continued: "We propose that the inclusiveness and international legitimacy of financial standards, universally negotiated and universally applied, can be accomplished best through the provisions related to Domestic Regulation under Article VI of the GATS".

Sanders spoke on behalf of Antigua and Barbuda, and other nations with the same concerns including Belize, Fiji, Guyana, Papua New Guinea, the Maldives, the Solomon Islands and St Kitts and Nevis.

Barbados, Cuba and Panama spoke in support of Sir Ronald's presentation, and Australia, Canada and Mexico, three OECD member states expressed guarded sympathy for the concerns of the small states which advanced the proposals.

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