WTO fears Cancun meet may 'fail'

Endorsing India's viewpoint, World Trade Organisation deputy director general Roderick Abbott warned on Friday against overloading of the multilateral trade agenda saying it could lead to a failure of the WTO Ministerial meeting in Cancun in September.

"At the moment we have about a dozen issues, which have not been resolved and this is too big a number to be put before the ministers over five days. We have to reduce these to four or five things, which they can discuss, negotiate and decide," he told PTI.

"This is the challenge ahead of us. If it is (agenda) overloaded we would be where we started," Abbott said on the sidelines of a seminar in Geneva.

He said the issues, which needed to be given priority by the members included TRIPs (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) and public health, implementation issues and Singapore issues. 

Among the Singapore issues, he said investment and trade facilitation were more important.

Earlier speaking at the seminar on investment for development organised by Consumer, Unity and Trust Society, Department of International Development and UNCTAD, he said Doha declaration on investment is being interpreted differently by the developed and developing countries.

However, he said in Doha, there was a quantum shift towards development issues than just trade issues.

Underlining the importance of open investment regimes, he said countries, which had entered into the regional or bilateral trade agreement had been successful in attracting more foreign direct investment.

"Countries with open investment regime have been successful in attracting more foreign direct investment," Abbott said.

Stating that FDI represented source of profit, he said the agreement of investment was to narrow gap between perceived and real risk by bringing about predictability in the policies.

He said countries like Mexico and China had gained a lot in terms of foreign direct investment by entering into trade agreements and countries now had to decide whether they wanted to do it at multilateral level or just bilateral level.