Hazards in Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs): Investors’ rights v. public health

The twists and turns of the Doha talks and the WTO

Welcome to this session on Doha and the Multilateral Trading System – From Impasse to development? which the South Centre is pleased to co-organise.

This session aims to look at what the future holds for the WTO, in particular in relation to the development dimension, and the interests of the developing countries.

After the Uruguay Round, the developing countries went into a mood of reflection because many of them were not active in the negotiations and did not fully understand what they had signed on to or the implications. So for a number of years after 1995, for the developing countries, their priority in the WTO was to understand the obligations they had entered into and the problems of implementation, particularly in new issues such as TRIPS, Services, TRIMS which they had been obliged to take on as new obligations, in exchange for the re-entering of agriculture and textiles into the GATT system. And to get the WTO to review and possibly reform its rules.

Towards an alternative narrative for the multilateral trading system

This presentation will argue that the recent attempts by some policy makers to use the concept of Global Value Chains (GVCs) to make a case for increased trade liberalization is deeply flawed for three reasons: First because it attempts to bring back the notion of a self-regulating market that is disembedded from society and divorced from the asymmetries in economic power that characterize today’s interdependent global economy; Second, because it attempts to revive the discredited Washington Consensus; and third because it does not provide a framework for helping developing economies develop beyond their current comparative advantages. Consequently, this approach to trade liberalization we will argue is a false basis to re-invigorate the current Doha round and to deal with the crisis in multilateralism. We will attempt to provide an alternative and more sustainable basis to rebuild the multilateral trading system.

Developing countries are increasingly being adversely affected by the economic recession in Europe and the slowdown in the United States.

The hope that major emerging economies like China, India and Brazil would continue to have robust growth, de-coupling from Western economies and becoming an alternative engine of global growth has been dashed by recent data showing that they are themselves weakening.

What Explains the South’s Recent High Growth — And Can It Continue?

Recently there emerged a view that developing countries had “de-coupled” their economies from the developed countries and had taken off to a path of high growth. But this is an overly-optimistic view. This article by the South Centre’s Chief Economist examines the growth record of developing countries and analyses how the good performance was based mainly on external factors that no longer exist. The next issue of SouthViews will have a follow-up article on the need for a new development strategy in the South.

Re-making Financial Policy to Meet Society’s Needs

By Yaga Venugopal Reddy

The financial sector has been hit by major crises and scandals, to the point that its credibility with the public has fallen to historically low levels. A re- thinking and re-making of financial policies and the role of financial institutions is thus urgently needed. This was the theme of a lecture presented by the distinguished former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Yaga Venugopal Reddy, which was made in conjuncture with the 2012 Annual General Meeting of the Bank for International Settlements held in Basel, Switzerland. The 2012 Per Jacobsson Foundation Lecture by Mr Reddy, made on 24 June 2012, covered three main themes: (1) Society and Finance, (2) Economic Policies and the Financial Sector, and (3) Regulation of the Financial Sector.

Below is the first part of the lecture, on Society and Finance. Future issues of SouthViews will publish the other two parts of the lecture.

New Blow to Banking System

The still-developing LIBOR scandal is the latest and biggest blow to the credibility of big banks and their regulators, and should catalyse broad-ranging reforms to the financial system.