Trade Policy Note Final-rev08 - Development

Box 20: The New or “Singapore” Issues
At the Marrakech Conference which concluded the Uruguay Round and established
the WTO, the concluding remarks of the Chairman set out the elements of a possible
work programme for the new Organization. 111 In addition to trade and labour
standards strongly advocated by the United States, the list included a wide range of
items such as the relationship between immigration policies and international trade,
international trade and company law, the establishment of a compensation mechanism
for the erosion of trade preferences and the link between trade, development , political
stability, and the alleviation of poverty. Only two of these, trade and investment and
trade and competition policy were retained at the first WTO Ministerial Conference in
Singapore in 1996 to which were added transparency in government procurement and
trade facilitation (i.e. the Singapore issues). All but trade facilitation were dropped at
the Cancun Conference in 2003. 112 Nevertheless, the developed country proponents of
the Singapore Issues have continued to pursue the missing three in FTAs with
developing countries.
Policy Space within FTAs
While it should be expected that a FTA will result in the elimination of tariff
protection for “substantially all” of the mutual trade between its members, (i.e. in
conformity with Article XXIV of GATT), many FTAs involve additional
commitments that can severely reduce or eliminate “policy space” permitted by
WTO agreements. Such commitments negatively affect the ability of developing
countries to pursue development objectives.Attention should be given to Policy Space
in such areas as:
(a) Intellectual property. Particular attention should be given to provisions of FTAs
which may impose commitments which eliminate flexibilities provided by the TRIPS
Agreement, by seriously constraining the scope to impose compulsory licensing, even
those applied to pharmaceuticals for health purposes 113 . Such provisions undermine
both the spirit and the intent of the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health, in
addition to permitting patent holders to block parallel imports 114 . FTAs in this area
may also require the patenting of plants and/or animals or even all life forms and
undermine measures intended to prevent bio-piracy 115 . Trade marks may be given
precedence so as to pre-empt the use of GIs by communities, while patent and
111 See document MTN.TNC/Min(94)/6 (www.wto.org).
112 For an insight into the events leading to this decision see Supperamaniam M. Epilogue, in Sieh Mei
Ling op.cit.
113 See Sanya Reid Smith, TRIPs provisions in US free trade agreements that effect medicine prices
paper paper presented to Regional meeting of Civil Society organiz ations on FTAs .in the Arab region
, Cairo 9-11 December 2006
114 Recent United States legislation discourages the inclusion of provisions restricting parallel
importation in future FTAs Sec. 631 of Science, State, Justice and Commerce and Related
Appropriations Act 2006, Public Law 109-108,..
115 See Silvia Rodriguez Cervantes, FTAs: Trading Away Traditional Knowledge, GRAIN briefings
2006 (http://www.grain.org/briefings_files/fta-tk-03-2006-en.pdf).
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