Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization
Declaration on the Contribution of the World Trade Organization to Achieving Greater Coherence in Global Economic Policymaking
1. Ministers recognize that the globalization of the world
economy has led to ever-growing interactions between the economic
policies pursued by individual countries, including interactions
between the structural, macroeconomic, trade, financial and development
aspects of economic policymaking. The task of achieving harmony
between these policies falls primarily on governments at the national
level, but their coherence internationally is an important and
valuable element in increasing the effectiveness of these policies
at national level. The Agreements reached in the Uruguay Round
show that all the participating governments recognize the contribution
that liberal trading policies can make to the healthy growth and
development of their own economies and of the world economy as
a whole.
2. Successful cooperation in each area of economic policy contributes
to progress in other areas. Greater exchange rate stability, based
on more orderly underlying economic and financial conditions,
should contribute towards the expansion of trade, sustainable
growth and development, and the correction of external imbalances.
There is also a need for an adequate and timely flow of concessional
and non-concessional financial and real investment resources to
developing countries and for further efforts to address debt problems,
to help ensure economic growth and development. Trade liberalization
forms an increasingly important component in the success of the
adjustment programmes that many countries are undertaking, often
involving significant transitional social costs. In this connection,
Ministers note the role of the World Bank and the IMF in supporting
adjustment to trade liberalization, including support to net food-importing
developing countries facing short-term costs arising from agricultural
trade reforms.
3. The positive outcome of the Uruguay Round is a major contribution
towards more coherent and complementary international economic
policies. The results of the Uruguay Round ensure an expansion
of market access to the benefit of all countries, as well as a
framework of strengthened multilateral disciplines for trade.
They also guarantee that trade policy will be conducted in a more
transparent manner and with greater awareness of the benefits
for domestic competitiveness of an open trading environment. The
strengthened multilateral trading system emerging from the Uruguay
Round has the capacity to provide an improved forum for liberalization,
to contribute to more effective surveillance, and to ensure strict
observance of multilaterally agreed rules and disciplines. These
improvements mean that trade policy can in the future play a more
substantial role in ensuring the coherence of global economic
policymaking.
4. Ministers recognize, however, that difficulties the
origins of which lie outside the trade field cannot be redressed
through measures taken in the trade field alone. This underscores
the importance of efforts to improve other elements of global
economic policymaking to complement the effective implementation
of the results achieved in the Uruguay Round.
5. The interlinkages between the different aspects of economic
policy require that the international institutions with responsibilities
in each of these areas follow consistent and mutually supportive
policies. The World Trade Organization should therefore pursue
and develop cooperation with the international organizations responsible
for monetary and financial matters, while respecting the mandate,
the confidentiality requirements and the necessary autonomy in
decision-making procedures of each institution, and avoiding the
imposition on governments of cross-conditionality or additional
conditions. Ministers further invite the Director-General of the
WTO to review with the Managing Director of the International
Monetary Fund and the President of the World Bank, the implications
of the WTO's responsibilities for its cooperation with the Bretton
Woods institutions, as well as the forms such cooperation might
take, with a view to achieving greater coherence in global economic
policymaking.
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