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Immense efforts needed to meet WTO regime challenges: Commerce Minister
ISLAMABAD (August 16 2002) : Commerce Minister Abdul Razak Dawood on
Thursday emphasised the need of making immense efforts to meet the growing challenges of WTO regime to protect the interests of the country's agricultural and industrial sectors.
He said, WTO and all related activities must be projected in the larger national
interest to create awareness among the concerned stakeholders.
"Those who are not aware of the implications of the issue and not taking it seriously
would have to suffer in future," he remarked.
He stated this while speaking at a two-day Workshop on "Agricultural Trade
Negotiations" organised by the WTO wing of the Ministry of Commerce.
"The government is also making concerted efforts to cope with the situation to be emerging after implementation of the World Trade Agreement aimed at creating free trade mechanism," he added. He said, "WTO will affect the lives of majority of the people and if the things do not move in certain direction then situation would worsen".
This warrants discussing the issue and common strategies to he developed in order to combat the situation, he said adding, while doing that we must keep in mind that the most of the member states are lacking sufficient capacity and institutional support to fulfil the prescribed standards of WTO.
The Commerce Minister said, the government is very much concerned about the matter and taking appropriate steps to prepare the country to meet demands of the future.
In line with WTO policy, he said, the government has allowed foreign investors to acquire land for investment in Agriculture Corporate Farming.
He said, "We want to set up market mechanism to have market access in accordance with the needs of the modern age and government is doing something in this direction."
Razak Dawood called upon the participants of the workshop to pay due attention on formulating viable methodology to tackle the issue effectively.
Earlier Akhtar Mahmood, a former Secretary presented a view of WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) and mentioned in detail the obligations of the WTO.
Rashid Kaukab, an expert, highlighted the current state of AoA Negotiations.
Business Recorder
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Pakissan.com;
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