Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

One could say that the World Trade Organization has been the best promotion agency of the city of Doha and the State of Qatar. No need to place an expensive advertisement on Al Jazeera, CNN or the BBC. The new round of global trade talks that was launched in this same city about seven years ago was dubbed the Doha Development Round. The names of Doha and the WTO are now tightly linked.

It is therefore no wonder that you are working hard, together with many other WTO members, to ensure that Doha is associated with a successful outcome. One that delivers on the aspirations of developing countries to achieve better standards of living through a more open and fairer trading system.

The launch of the Doha Round was based on the shared belief that trade can be an engine for development and that a more open, more transparent, more equitable rule-based global trading system, more sensitive to the challenges of its poorer members, was necessary to realise this potential.

The WTO was simply translating in its field of activity the aspirations contained in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals adopted in 2000. World leaders recognised their collective responsibility in laying the foundations of a more peaceful, prosperous and just world. They pledged greater cooperation to address global economic challenges, trade being part of them.

Concluding the Doha Development Round is, therefore, delivering on the Millennium Development Goals.

While trade can be an enabler, a new realisation has emerged during the last decade. For trade to fully contribute to sustainable development, growth and job creation, it has to be accompanied by financial resources to address infrastructure and supply-side constraints. It requires Aid for Trade. Making trade possible is one of two twins. Making trade happen is the other twin.

We have all heard the old debate about trade and not aid, later turned into aid and not trade. The United Nations Millennium Declaration established a new consensus: yes to a more open and fairer global trading system, but also yes to financing for the development of the members of our global family with limited resources. It is trade for development and it must be Aid for Trade.

Since 2005, we have been working closely with our partners in the United Nations, with the World Bank, regional development banks, the OECD, the IMF, regional economic communities and national governments to mobilise resources and political support for a comprehensive Aid for Trade package to complement the results of the Doha Development Round.

In 2007 we all gathered in Geneva for the first global Aid for Trade Conference. A clearer view emerged of national and regional needs and priorities and a process was started to develop projects on the ground.

In 2008 we have seen progress in implementation of trade capacity-building projects on the ground. Major development partners, such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Islamic Development Bank and many others, have set up Aid for Trade programmes which have started connecting the dots. UNDP and many UN agencies are helping developing countries mainstream trade into their development strategies. And we have also worked on improving the monitoring and evaluation of these projects to measure progress and the multiplier impact that the projects are having on the ground.
All this work will feed into the Second Global Aid for Trade Review which the World Trade Organization will host in June 2009.

But this will not be possible if resources are not mobilised, if financing does not flow. If promises are not kept. And this is why this conference comes at the right time to remind us that, despite the dire economic situation, we must keep our focus in our global solidarity endeavour.

But if Aid for Trade is important, the big prize lies in the success of the Doha Development Round.

It will address the distortions in agricultural trade caused by unfair agriculture subsidies, an issue of vital importance for many developing countries. Let us not forget that over two-thirds of the world's poor live in rural areas. Let us not forget African cotton producers who have in the WTO their only chance of disciplining subsidies given by the US and EU to their producers.

It will reduce tariffs and barriers in industry, in clean technology and services and thus create new trade opportunities in particular in sectors of interest to developing countries. It will deliver on the promise of duty-free and quota-free access for the exports of the world's poorest.

It will facilitate trade by addressing customs red tape that imposes a huge burden on small and medium-sized traders.

It will for the first time discipline fishery subsidies which are contributing to the depletion of our oceans. And I could continue the list.

After seven years of continuous negotiations, many of these elements are already on the table, but they will not materialise unless we conclude the whole package. And in the meantime the potential benefits of the Round remain in limbo.

Any good negotiators would want to maximise the results. A 2 per cent more here and a 5 per cent more there. The question we have to ask ourselves today is: would this be worth it if we have to wait for three, four or five years? As the saying goes: “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”.

In recent months we have witnessed unprecedented fluctuations in oil and commodity prices. We have witnessed a severe food crisis. And if all of this was not enough, we are facing one of the worst financial crises since the 1930s. We are faced with policy challenges of a scale not seen since the end of the Second World War.

A major difference between the unfolding economic crisis and past ones is that the world is today more globalized. Today we are all in the same boat. Big countries and small. Rich and poor. Strong and weak. There is also a growing consensus that only multilateral solutions can address these challenges.

A few days ago, during a visit to Cambodia I learned that the majority of their textiles and clothing companies that export to rich country markets do not have contracts from buyers beyond February 2009. This is an industry that currently employs 300,000 people. Now imagine what the impact to the Cambodian economy will be if these people lose their jobs.

But there are also growing difficulties in servicing existing contracts due to the lack of availability and affordability of trade finance. Roughly 90 per cent of international trade is financed with short-term credit and therefore any drying up of this financing channel will have a serious impact on developing countries. The WTO recently hosted regional and financial institutions, together with export credit agencies, to address this problem. And we are starting to see responses, including the recent World Bank announcement of the tripling of the ceiling for its trade finance guarantees, action by the OECD and by export credit agencies. This issue needs to remain high on our list of priorities to cushion the impact of the current financial crisis on developing countries.

In the current economic conditions there may be a tendency to embrace inward-looking policies that put domestic interests ahead of international cooperation. In tough times, it is too easy for politicians to blame the foreigner for the nation's ills, shutting foreign products out of the market and slashing foreign aid budgets.

The community of the United Nations meeting this weekend in Doha can send a powerful message to the world.

That we stand united to address global challenges.

That we will strive to find multilateral solutions.

That we will avoid unilateral, beggar-thy-neighbour responses.

That we will maintain our commitment to help the poorest and weakest among us.

This weekend Doha must send a signal of the urgency in delivering on trade and on aid. There is no better place to reaffirm your commitment to ensuring that development is placed at the heart of the global trading system than here in Doha, where it all began.

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, please, keep the Doha promises alive.
Thank you for your attention.