Vietnam in big push to gain early membership of WTO
GENEVA - Vietnam is making a determined effort in negotiations to join the World Trade Organisation but still has far to go to meet a self-imposed target for WTO entry of January 2005, trading partners said yesterday.
The negotiations began in 1995 and Vietnam has announced that it wants to be in the WTO by the time the decades-old global system of textile quota restrictions finally expires at the end of 2004.
Remaining outside the world trade body would leave Vietnam vulnerable to unilateral curbs on its exports by western nations, while goods from rival nations would enter unrestrained. Access to the US market under a bilateral trade deal signed this year has helped clothing outstrip oil as Vietnam's top export.
Vietnam has recently redoubled its efforts to push the WTO negotiations forward, making new offers to open its own goods and services markets ahead of this week's WTO membership working party meeting that ended yesterday.
But industrialised nations said the offers, which include lowering average tariffs to 22 per cent, were not enough. They also questioned Vietnam's claim for special treatment as a highly indebted low-income country, arguing that despite its current per capita income of just $400 a year it was a competitive exporter with high growth potential.
The working party has begun work on drafting its report that would form the basis of Vietnam's WTO admission. However, Vietnam was told it would have to come up with new offers and more information on how it intended to comply with WTO rules. As a poor developing country, Vietnam would be given extra time to bring its trading system into line with WTO precepts but some reforms will be demanded at the outset.
* China marked the second anniversary of its entry to the World Trade Organisation by giving itself top marks on market opening despite foreign complaints that it is dragging its feet, Reuters reports from Beijing.
Long Yongtu, the former trade negotiator who clinched China's membership, said: "China has done quite well over the past two years, so in terms of its WTO promises, it can get an 'A'."
By Frances Williams - The Financial Times - December 12, 2003.
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