Many South countries cool to investment talks

GENEVA -Many developing countries, including several Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) members, now appear to be coming out more openly to voice their objections and concerns to starting a multilateral investment agreement (MIA) process in the World Trade Organization or being rushed into taking a decision on this question at the Singapore Ministerial meeting.

On 12 February, UNCTAD had held a second seminar on the issue at Divonne, in neighbouring France, with the participation of several delegations, academics, representatives of some transnational corporations (TNCs) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and other officials.

At an earlier Divonne seminar (in November last year), India had raised some probing questions, to which no one responded, and said it would be difficult for India to accept a "right of establishment" for any foreign investor (see TWE 125, Pg. 6).

At the present seminar a WTO official had claimed "investment" is already dealt with in the WTO. At a luncheon speech to the seminar the WTO head, Renato Ruggiero, pushed for an MIA and a WTO locale, and when no questions were put, declared that there was a consensus!

Similarly, at the end of the seminar and a panel discussion, though the Chairman of the seminar, Mr. Roger Lawrence who is the Deputy to the UNCTAD Secretary-General and heads the division on TNCs and Investment, drew no conclusions, the Canadian ambassador, as one of the co-sponsors, drew the conclusion that there was a consensus at the seminar in favour of the MIA.

Lawrence told the SUNS later that it was clear from the seminar that there was a very wide variety of views on the issue of a multilateral investment agreement, emphasizing his use of the word "agreement" in lower case.

The UNCTAD secretariat, he said, had "no position" with regard to the best way forward on investment or the proper institution for any discussions, now or later on.

The issue he said would figure at UNCTAD-IX, and the Secretary-General of UNCTAD had spelt out some views in his Report to the Conference.

In early February, Horst Krenzler, the Director-General of External Relations (DG-I) in the EU's Executive Commission, had met with a smaller group of Geneva WTO diplomats to discuss with them the investment, social clause and the environment issues.

On 13 February, Canada would appear to have got together an informal group of delegations to discuss the issue. Early last December, Canada had informally provided a "Canadian Paper" setting out what it called "Elements of a WTO Work Programme on Investment", and proposing that the Singapore meeting set up a Working Group and mandate it to consider several elements (listed in its paper) of the investment issue and reach decisions within 18 months, in time to launch investment negotiations at the 1998 WTO Ministerial meeting.

The 13 February meeting would appear to have focused on this issue and how to begin work at the WTO.

Participants have been unwilling to acknowledge such a meeting or identify those present there or the discussions. WTO officials said they had no official word of such a meeting, but that they had learnt of such a meeting indirectly from some delegations.

But information pieced together from various sources show that some 20 countries or more were present, unlike in the past where such discussions were amongst a handful of delegations.

The Europeans, Canadians and several Latin American countries favoured start of a process at the WTO, with some Latin Americans expressing their worry that otherwise the issue would be pursued at the OECD, and developing countries would be faced with a fait accompli at the WTO and given an accord on a "take-it-or-leave-it-basis".