Policy: Closure of the Doha Rounds?

The Doha Development Round is potentially coming to a close with a new working paper “Conclude Doha, It Matters!” . Most of Doha deals with trade regulations and tariffs, but it touched a little on infrastructure too.

“According to the working paper, developing countries will benefit from a Doha deal as a result of reductions in high “peak” tariffs that constrain their exports. They also have much to gain from actions to reduce the costs of moving goods through borders and from taking advantage of the Aid for Trade initiative, which seeks to improve infrastructure, trade institutions and policies to help countries to exploit trade opportunities.” WB Press Release

The Aid for Trade initiative basically promotes policy and financial incentives for improving means for trade (which includes infrastructure). “Conclude Doha” is also a continuation of the World Bank’s series on the global economic crisis and looks to trade and the WTO in order to alleviate some of the pressure. It lobbies hard for multilateral trade agreements, calling regional trade organizations (think the EU) as “imperfect solutions”.

This working paper is pretty interesting and makes some good arguments for trade liberalization and multilateral relationships. The closure of the Doha Round will become more likely as the impacts of the global economic uncertainty come into play.

World Bank: Turmoil at Twenty Part II

So since the introduction was actually covered in the post prior, I'm going to sum up chapter one of the Turmoil at Twenty report.

There's a lot of data and it mostly points to restructuring being the cause of development. This is the most interesting graph out of the chapter:

News: Emergency loans to Belarus

More emergency funds make the IMF loan to Belarus total $2.23 Billion. This is almost purely economic stimulus money to keep things afloat, but I have to wonder if this money would be better used for other things. Either way $2.23 Billion is nothing to sneeze at. The impacts to funding infrastructure projects will likely be seen in a few years after all the economic issues level out, or get worse. Money is going into keeping the economy stable, but with no long term investments in public goods, there's going to be a severe lack of functional infrastructure whether it's education or roads:

“The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Wednesday granted Belarus access to $700 million worth of emergency funds, bringing a crisis-easing loan package to $2.23 billion. The IMF executive board said Minsk's economic performance had warranted the disbursement of about $699.5 million, part of a $3.63 billion package….” [Agence France Presse/Factiva]

Reuters adds that “….IMF Deputy Managing Director Takatoshi Kato said the country had made ‘good progress’ in adjusting its policies to weather the global financial crisis…. ‘Exchange rate adjustment has helped reduce external vulnerabilities, with the present exchange regime providing a buffer against external shocks,’ Kato said. ‘The adjustment has been supported by a tight fiscal policy, with revenue shortfalls offset by spending cuts, and by an interest rate policy that has kept market rates high in real terms,’ he added….” [Reuters/Factiva]

Bloomberg writes that “…Belarus’ trade deficit widened more than 77 percent in the first half of the year to $3.95 billion from a $2.23 billion shortfall in the same period in 2008, according the National Statistics Committee. Exports to Russia, the country’s main trading partner, plummeted to $2.96 billion from $5.57 billion in the first six months of last year…. ‘Securing sufficient financial resources from the international community is essential for Belarus’ reform efforts,’ Kato said….” [Bloomberg]