BALI, In­done­sia–Trade Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath has ap­pealed to par­tic­i­pants at a Min­is­te­r­i­al Con­fer­ence of the World Trade Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WTO) in Bali, In­done­sia, to use po­lit­i­cal will to take the talks for­ward and achieve agree­ment,"Notwith­stand­ing the cur­rent dead­lock of the Do­ha De­vel­op­ment Agen­da, Trinidad and To­ba­go strong­ly be­lieves that the World Trade Or­ga­ni­za­tion and the mul­ti­lat­er­al trad­ing sys­tem can still meet the hopes and as­pi­ra­tions of all seg­ments of so­ci­ety, not least amongst them, the poor and vul­ner­a­ble," he said.

The Do­ha De­vel­op­ment Agen­da which was launched in 2001 was a piv­otal point in the his­to­ry of the WTO since it brought key de­vel­op­ment is­sues to the heart of trade ne­go­ti­a­tions and with it, the promise of re­bal­anc­ing trade in favour of the more vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries. T&T, as a small de­vel­op­ing coun­try, con­tin­ues to in­vest in the suc­cess of the mul­ti­lat­er­al trad­ing sys­tem as an im­por­tant frame­work for the growth and de­vel­op­ment of in­ter­na­tion­al trade.

"In the con­text of trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion, Trinidad and To­ba­go sup­ports the adop­tion of a bal­anced ap­proach which links the dis­ci­plines to the tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance and spe­cial and dif­fer­en­tial treat­ment re­quired for de­vel­op­ing coun­tries to im­ple­ment them," Bharath said.

"As a net food im­port­ing de­vel­op­ing coun­try, we are in sup­port of pro­pos­als in­tend­ed to pro­mote food se­cu­ri­ty. Trinidad and To­ba­go sup­ports the ini­tia­tive to make spe­cial and dif­fer­en­tial pro­vi­sions more pre­cise, op­er­a­tional and ef­fec­tive for the ben­e­fits to be re­al­ized by de­vel­op­ing coun­tries." Sig­nif­i­cant to the post-Bali work pro­gramme is a fo­cus on is­sues that are very im­por­tant to the groups in which T&T op­er­ates, such as Cari­com, par­tic­u­lar­ly de­vel­op­ment sup­port to­wards ad­vance­ment of the ac­tiv­i­ties of small­er economies.

Bharath urged par­tic­i­pants to let their ac­tions dur­ing the week's dis­cus­sions not on­ly send a sym­bol­ic mes­sage that the WTO con­tin­ues to be cred­i­ble and rel­e­vant, but al­so to out­line prag­mat­ic steps that are like­ly to lift many pop­u­la­tions out of world pover­ty and to pro­vide hope for the near fu­ture.Ac­com­pa­ny­ing Bharath at the con­fer­ence are John Sandy, Per­ma­nent RepresT&TTrinidad and To­ba­go, Gene­va.The 9th Min­is­te­r­i­al Con­fer­ence of the World Trade Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WTO) in Bali ends to­day.