"The devil is in the detail": Zambian trade minister on trade and the WTO

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Dipak Patel, Zambian Minister of Commerce, Trade & Industry and is the chair of the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) Least Developed Country Group.

Visiting London for discussions with Secretary of State Hilary Benn, UK on the Doha Round of World Trade Talks, Dipak sat down with Malcolm Doney and Martin Wroe, editors of DFID’s quarterly magazine Developments

Below are edited highlights of Mr Patel's views on trade and what's at stake for Zambia and other developing countries in 2006.

The Hong Kong meeting in December did make a difference for Least Developed Countries because we went from 0% on products with duty and quota-free access to 97% but that 97% can mean nothing if the 3% include products of our interest as least developed countries, such as clothing. So the devil is in the detail. That's what we have to get done by the end of April. More on World Trade Organisation outcomes (December, 2005)

I was prepared to walk away from the table in Hong Kong but the way things have turned out since Uruguay and Marrakesh is that the multi-lateral trade organisation is now in our interest because it's a rule-based system. Walking away from it and destroying the WTO would not be in our interests, because then countries would get into bi-lateral agreements - and our negotiating capacity and authority and power on a bi-lateral basis is extremely weak, politically and economically. We have to engage at the WTO…but not at any cost.

The good thing is that for the whole of last year, through DFID, no strings attached, we were given technical assistance. Prior to Hong Kong, up to Cancun, we were always in negotiations and waiting for the Americans or whoever to develop a proposal, and then we'd react.

What DFID did at our request, was to provide the assistance for us to do the technical work on things such as rules of origin – so that in Hong Kong we had our proposals on the table and did not wait for anyone else. We had our own language on the table. That assistance continues. We've never had the ability to put proposals on the table. I mean the Financial Times has a bigger trade team than our entire trade division.

Subsidies have to go. Then we have a competitive, comparative advantage, especially in agriculture and agricultural processed products. We have the weather, the land, the labour costs so we can actually produce and sell. Cotton is an example. The US has removed subsidies but not domestic support.

Once you remove domestic support then all countries are competitive. Then you get industrialisation. You grow cotton. You have a ginnery, you have a textile mill, you are adding value to your product.

I've been on the scene for 15 years now and the mindset of DFID has completely changed. Especially with the Commission for Africa report, the whole thinking is much more practical, it's about how we can solve the problems rather than being told what to do. I remember talking to DFID before and you were effectively told what to do - in a nice way of course! That mindset has changed which is good. Though there is a propensity still to do that from the Americans and others.

In Hong Kong we ended up with the G110. The message was a political statement – 110 countries out of 149 at the WTO were saying 'No'. We too have learned to play politics at that level. Before, we used to shy away from it because we were the poor countries who were are asking for things but now we don't shy away from it, because public opinion is with us.

We would never have been able to bring this to the attention of the world had it not been for the Oxfams, the Christian Aids, the Make Poverty History and Trade Justice movements, all of that, because we don't have the capacity to finance a global campaign. But the campaigns brought it to the attention of the countries that matter.

It's not easy, but without that support we are absolutely weak and all our work would come to zero for us, because we don't have the clout.

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