PNG Trade and Commerce Minister in Indonesia for World Trade Organisation ministerial conference.4/12/2013
MINISTER for Trade, Commerce and Industry Richard Maru and a delegation from his department left for Bali, Indonesia on Monday for the 9th World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial conference.
Maru, Department Secretary John Andrias and trade officials will be among the delegates from 157 member countries. The conference will run up to Friday. It will be conducted in plenary sessions, during which ministers will be invited to comment on the general operations and functioning of the WTO as far as their countries are concerned. Papua New Guinea is expected to give a position paper on trade facilitation, agriculture and development. The paper Trade facilitation- PNG” recognises the importance of reducing unnecessary costs of administrative bottlenecks to allow the free flow of goods and services between and within borders. Agriculture is an important sector in PNG economy as 80% of its population depended on it for livelihood, according to the PNG paper. The paper says PNG would be seeking the elimination of any arbitrary trade barriers, particularly on agricultural products that places PNG at a disadvantage and weakened its capacity to meet food security objectives. On development, PNG would be supporting initiatives aimed at enhancing technical, financial and capacity-building assistance to help the government meet its minimum membership obligations set forth in various multilateral trade agreements. Maru said PNG’s offensive position was to eliminate all forms of trade distorting barriers, including unnecessary technical barriers and non-tariff barriers such as agricultural subsidies that hindered PNG’s ability to trade in products of export interest and appreciate the full benefits of a more open global economy. He said PNG was a small developing island economy with narrow production base. “Because of this, our goal is to diversify the economy and reduce heavy dependence on the non- renewable sector. “The general thrust of our policy is to adapt value adding and downstream processing of our natural resources to create employment and revenue. “We appreciate the assistance from WTO and other international development partners for helping us improve the border challenges in so far as infrastructure and institutional capacity is concerned,” Maru said. WTO administered all the multilateral trade agreements covering trade in goods, services and intellectual property. All trade agreements and domestic trade policies must operate within the legal framework of the various WTO multilateral trade agreements. PNG Facts / The National Comments are closed.
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