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BOOK REVIEW |
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BOOK REVIEW |
Free Trade The book discusses various
issues regarding the accession to the World Trade Organization By A CORRESPONDENT At a time when people from different walks
of life have been talking about the need to extract the benefit of global free trade and
implication of Nepal after securing the membership of WTO, a new book has been published,
which tries to examine different aspects of WTO vis-à-vis Nepal. Edited by Hiramani Ghimire, the book
consists of five papers presented during a seminar organized in July. These papers and
other comments provide a fair amount of knowledge regarding Nepal’s entry into the
WTO. The papers, which were presented on the national basis, discusses many things like
the agricultural protectionism, Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
(TRIPS), Singapore Issues and Special and Different Treatment. Although Nepal secured the membership of
the WTO in September, it is yet to make necessary arrangements to be its full-fledged
member. One of the aims of the book was to analyze how to help the government in formally
acceding to the WTO. “This book presents Nepal’s hopes
and fears (which correspond to the hopes and fears of many other countries in the
developing world) about the WTO and comes up with suggestions to make it more relevant for
developing and least developed countries,” writes Hiramani in his introduction. Five experts look at different issues of
the WTO including its importance to Nepal. The WTO system has an explicit understanding
that developing and least developed countries would be able to enjoy special and different
treatment. Dr. Posh Raj Pandey explains the issues for
examination from a least developed country (LDC) perspective. He looks back at the genesis
of S&DT and enumerates all efforts at enabling the participation of developing
countries through its implementations. “The need of developing countries to have
recourse to financial resources in order to enable them to undertake their obligations and
enjoy their rights, including their rights under S&DT should be addressed,”
writes Dr. Pandey. Ratnakar Adhikari in his paper Cancun and
Beyond: How should Nepal Deal with Singapore Issues? writes, “Regardless of
Nepal’s intended membership, the Cancun Conference carries special significance for
the acceding countries because of the mandate provided by paragraph 48 of Doha
Declaration. This has opened the avenue for the acceding countries to become active
participants as opposed to passive observers in the Doha Declaration.” There are at
least 13 issues on which negotiations are going to be conducted as per the Doha mandate.
However, Singapore issues are slightly different in that negotiations on these issues are
to start only after the Cancun Ministerial meet. In his paper, TRIPS: Implications for
Nepal’s IPR Regime, Dr. Surendra Bhandari discusses various issues regarding the
intellectual property rights. “The protection and enforcement of IPRs should
contribute to the promotion of technology innovation and to the transfer and dissemination
of technology, to the mutual advantage of producers and users of technological knowledge
in a manner conducive to social and economic welfare, and to a balance of rights and
obligations,” writes Bhandari. “As basis for negotiations towards the TRIPS
Agreement, the Chairman of negotiating Group 11, using the four proposals mentioned above,
produced a composite text in which he grouped related points and arranged alternative
proposals on the same issues and conveniently identifying them, emphasizing that the
instrument would be implanted and thus left that question wide open.” From TRIPS to IP and other issues,
Bhupendra Panta discusses the Implementation Issues in the WTO. Panta writes on more
conceptual and theoretical aspects of the WTO. “The WTO is essentially a rules-based
organization. The developed countries overuse it, ostensibly in legitimate guises, while
the developing countries are unable to use the system at all. They have neither the
technical nor the financial capacity to exercise their rights within the WTO
mechanism,” said Panta. The book provides a comprehensive insight into the WTO and its implications to a least developed and land-locked country like Nepal. It will definitely be a useful reading for those interested in the issues of globalization and free trade.
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