Your Majesty King Mswati III,
Mr. Chairman,
Excellencies, Heads of State and Government,
Invited Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

At the outset, allow me to express on behalf of the World Trade Organization and on my own behalf our most  sincere gratitude to His Majesty King Mswati III of Swaziland and to the Secretary General of the COMESA secretariat, Mr. Sindiso Ngwenya, for inviting us to this important summit.

Allow me to start by paying tribute to your collective determination to deliver on  your collective vision of building a “fully integrated internationally competitive regional economic community; a community within which there is economic prosperity demonstrated by high living standards of its people with political and social stability; a community within which goods, services, capital and labor move freely across national borders”.

The  launch of the COMESA customs union in June 2009 was a positive step in this direction and it confirmed your collective resolve to ensure that the full integration of the COMESA region is underpinned by a robust trading regime.

There are some that still question the relationship between the multilateral trading system and the regional integration process.

The reality is that the multilateral trading system and regional trade integration initiatives like COMESA share the common overriding goal of using trade as an engine for development.  The underlying development model for both is export‑led growth.  Both the MTS and regional trade initiatives, by their very nature, aim to achieve this through economies of scale, creating larger markets through trade opening and reducing trade-distortions.   The WTO does this on a global scale while regional trading arrangements complement this on a regional level.

WTO members are deeply conscious of the important role of regional integration as a key building block of the multilateral trading system.  In fact,   parallel  to their engagement in the WTO, most WTO members are equally actively involved in multiple RTAs.

Furthermore, it is generally accepted among the WTO members that a developmental rationale exists for allowing developing countries to engage in progressive asymmetric opening with selected partners within regional trading arrangements without giving those same benefits to third parties.   This is why WTO rules include exceptions to the basic principle of non discrimination,  to allow for regional integration. 

Taking a closer look at the African regional trade integration agenda,  one realizes that it is designed to respond to the underlying assumption of development through trade creation,  through the establishment of larger markets, thereby generating economies of scale, the stimulation of competition and efficiency, and promotion of structural policy changes.

Moreover, deeper regional integration on the African continent is an important testing ground for Africa for more open rules on trade integration which allow it to sequence commitments in various areas not only related to trade in goods, but also in the area of trade in services (as is the case with COMESA).  A logical expectation would be greater ease at some future point, of COMESA countries taking on these obligations at the MTS level.

The launch of the COMESA customs union in June last year, coupled with the initiative announced earlier in October 2008 by COMESA, SADC and EAC to work towards a tripartite free-trade area are further steps in the harmonization of regional trading arrangements in Eastern and Southern Africa and an important step  towards achieving the African Economic Community agenda. 

Mr Chairman, the COMESA region has recorded significant achievements towards its overall objective. Among these achievements is the impressive progress towards eliminating barriers to intra COMESA trade which has resulted in substantial growth in the region. Intra COMESA trade has increased five fold from $3 billion in 2000 to $15 billion in 2009. Increasing intra COMESA trade is not only an important objective for this region but for the entire African continent.

The fact is that today, compared to other developing country regions, Africa trades less with itself than with the rest of the world. Take for example the ASEAN region where intra regional trade is 25% of total ASEAN trade compared to intra African trade which today stands at around 10%. The recent sharp drop in demand for Africa's exports as a result of the recession in developed countries highlighted Africa's continued vulnerability to external shocks.

The crisis reminded all of us of the still remaining challenges to achieving a sustained economic growth trajectory in Africa.

For its part, the multilateral trading system proved its worth during the past year as an insurance policy against protectionist pressures in major economies driven by domestic concerns over job losses and falling business activity. The reality is that without multilateral trade rules, Africa because of its trade-led growth pattern in recent times would have been severely affected by some of the trade-restrictive measures that were being proposed, including import restrictions and domestic production subsidies.

Despite this achievement in preventing the spread of protectionism, the fact remains that current multilateral trade rules are still unbalanced in favour of developed countries, reflecting in some instances, old colonial trade patterns.

What are these imbalances? I will give you one example: if one looks closely at the structure of industrial tariffs today, whether in developed countries or emerging countries, there still remains oddities like tariff peaks or tariff escalation. This means that, very often, the highest import tariffs in richer countries are applied on products in which, as if by coincidence, poorer countries have a comparative advantage. These imbalances basically stem from past — but sometimes also current — political and economic factors.  Much as there are many new players, new products and new patterns of export and import in today's world market, trade relations are still tainted by history, by a heritage of production choices and trading flows formed during colonial times.  These imbalances have to be corrected.

Concluding the WTO Doha Round negotiations is the only way these imbalances can be addressed and the playing field of global trade levelled. Bilateral trade agreements by their nature will not resolve these issues that continue to distort global trade, particularly in those sectors where you have a comparative advantage such as the current trade-distorting domestic subsidies in the cotton sector or in areas of food production which continue to undermine African competitiveness.

It is also important that we acknowledge that while concluding the Doha Round  will deliver substantial market access gains for your region in the areas of agriculture, industrial goods and services trade, maximizing those gains will depend to a large extent on your capacity to trade. This means addressing all the barriers to trade including non tariff, addressing your productive capacity constraints and putting in place the requisite economic infrastructure should continue to be a priority. To achieve all this will require significant resources.

In recognition of this, in 2005 we launched the Aid for Trade initiative in close cooperation with our multilateral, bilateral and regional partners to actively mobilize increased resources towards financing of economic infrastructure and productive capacities in developing countries.  

The objectives of this initiative as agreed to by WTO members are:

• to enable developing countries, particularly LDCs [least-developed countries], to use trade more effectively to promote growth, development and poverty reduction and to achieve their development objectives, including the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs);
   
• to help developing countries, particularly LDCs, to build supply-side capacity and trade-related infrastructure in order to facilitate their access to markets and to export more;
   
• to help facilitate, implement, and adjust to trade reform and liberalization;
   
• to assist regional integration; and
   
• to assist smooth integration into the world trading system  and to assist in implementation of trade agreements.

Since 2007, we have held two Aid for Trade global review conferences to take stock of how much progress we have made in this regard and I am happy to report that confirmation that trade is being prioritized more clearly by developing countries in their development strategies, that donors are offering more and better Aid for Trade and new partners are becoming engaged in South-South cooperation.

Furthermore, the reviews have also highlighted the fact that the allocation of more Aid for Trade was being achieved without diverting resources from other development priorities such as health, education or environment. We are now in the process of preparing for the 3rd Global Aid for Trade review which will focus next year on how to assess the impact of these Aid for Trade interventions.

I must take this opportunity to pay tribute to the COMESA Secretary General for his leadership in ensuring that this region was the first in formulating an Aid for Trade  regional strategy and identifying regional projects for funding under this initiative. One such project is the North-South corridor project which is receiving considerable support from bilateral and regional partners.

I should also pay tribute to the leadership of the President of the African Development Bank, the Chair of the African Union Commission and the Executive Secretary General of the UNECA who have ensured that Africa articulates its Aid for Trade priorities in line with the overall objectives of the African Economic Community agenda.

Mr Chairman, the theme of this summit, “Harnessing Science and Technology for Development” is not only relevant but timely. In about three weeks' time, we will be together your colleagues from around the world at the UN headquarters in New York to review progress towards delivering on the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The role and importance of science and technology towards addressing  developmental priorities of the COMESA region cannot be overstated. Science and technology is a cross-cutting issue that applies to all sectors of our societies, whether we are talking about the delivery of better and effective health care, improving access to basic services like telecommunications and information, increasing crop yields, improving trade competitiveness or addressing new challenges such as climate change, science and technology is critical.

The conclusion of the Doha Round will among other gains result in improved market access for technological products and services which will translate into better access to affordable technology and improved conditions for investments in these sectors.

In the meantime, we will continue working closely with the COMESA secretariat to deliver trade-related technical assistance and ensure that COMESA members have at their disposal the tools they need to enhance their trade capacity.

In concluding, and going beyond the purely trade and growth related arguments and  delving into my own European experience, I am deeply convinced that regional trade integration is also a critical centrepiece of other indirectly converging key considerations such as peace and political stability and I am convinced that this region is on the right track to being the engine of growth and stability on the African continent.

Thank you