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Oléagineux, Corps Gras, Lipides. Volume 13, Number 4, 267-71, Juillet-Août 2006, Cycle du développement et PMA

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Author(s) : Hélène Delorme, Bénédicte Hermelin

Summary : Developing countries represent 2/3 of the members of the WTO but export only 1/3 of total goods and services world trade. This gap between their institutional weight and their commercial power explains why they have succeeded to become effective stakeholders in the WTO negotiation but have failed to move its course towards their needs. All existing models show the gains from liberalisation that developing countries could expect are low and focused on the few emergent countries. The paper analyses the reasons of this situation (modalities of the trade negotiation on agricultural as well as on non agricultural products) and its risks (budgetary costs ten times higher than trade gains, loss of the capacity to adopt economic diversification policies using selective protection).

Keywords : WTO, emergent countries, liberalisation models, selective protection