ROME: Global poverty will increase if the world doesn’t work to maintain a stable and open trading system, World Trade Organisation (WTO) director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala says.
“We should keep our eyes on maintaining a stable, free, open and predictable trading system,” Okonjo-Iweala said in an interview in Rome, where she also met Pope Francis.
“You cannot feed the world without trade, that is just a fact. One in four calories consumed in the world is traded.”
The former Nigerian finance minister, who was recently reappointed to the post of global international commerce chief, is facing an uphill battle in championing free trade following the election of Donald Trump in the United States.
“I know people are thinking about doom and gloom, that we’re going to have trade wars and so on and so forth, but there are opportunities within the challenges facing trade,” said Okonjo-Iweala, who is the first woman to run the Geneva-based organisation.
The WTO’s mission of fostering lower trade barriers is at odds with Trump’s threats of universal tariffs and his embrace of protectionism.
The United States contributes the largest share of the WTO’s budget of any individual country, followed closely by China, according to the latest annual report.
Okonjo Iweala, 70, recounted her youth during the Nigeria-Biafra war, saying her experience makes her aware of what’s at stake when trying to help people escape poverty and conflict.
“I’ve lived through a war, from the time I was 12 to 15. My parents lost everything – we had nothing. I couldn’t go to school during that time, as we ran from place to place.
“And I know what it means to eat one meal a day, because that’s what we did, sometimes we didn’t even have one meal,” she said.
“That accumulated knowledge of what it means to actually work to lift people up, that’s what my whole career has been about.”
Okonjo-Iweala said the WTO needs to move ahead with reforms and push countries to keep dialogue open.
“The way out is that we need to talk to each other,” she said. “We need mulilateralism, we need cooperation as no one country can solve global problems alone.”
Among bright spots, Okonjo-Iweala mentioned the growth in services trade which, she said is increasing at a rate of 8% to 9% a year, and of green trade.
The future is in services and digitally delivered services trade, which is worth US$4.25 trillion now.
“The other one is green trade, that’s another opportunity worth almost US$2 trillion now, and with prospects to grow,” she said. “We have to give hope whilst not running away from the fact that the present is challenging.”
That compares to total global trade of about US$30.4 trillion, according to the latest WTO data.
She said she discussed some challenges with Pope Francis in Rome, who was particularly concerned about the number of conflicts and uncertainty in the world.
The head of the Roman-Catholic church has repeatedly spoken out against income inequality. — Bloomberg
