Gattastrophic aid
EVEN AS the developed world congratulates itself on the Uruguay round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), Third World countries are trying to come to terms with what has been left unsaid.
The World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have concluded that the overall global income gain from the Uruguay round will be $213 billion a year by 2002. But this gain actually conceals a loss for Africa of $2.6 billion. Other losers include Indonesia and some Mediterranean and Caribbean nations.
OECD estimates reveal that less than a third of the income gains will go to the South, and within the South, it will be largely to China and a few upper-income Southeast Asian countries. Sub-Saharan Africa will lose out because trade preferences in the European market, which they have had till now, will no longer be applicable.
Says Christian Aid, a church-sponsored, non-governmental organisation, "It is not right that the losers -- overwhelmingly the poorest countries of the world -- should bear the costs of the agreement, which brings so many benefits to others." Christian Aid has suggested that industrialised countries should take measures, such as extra aid, trade preferences and debt relief, to ease the transition to GATT for adversely-affected developing nations.