OMC – Los Miembros esperan un resultado de la CM12 sobre facilitación del comercio

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En una reunión del Grupo de Trabajo sobre Comercio, Deuda y Finanzas celebrada el 17 de mayo, la Directora General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala alentó a los Miembros de la OMC a que se basaran en sus debates para elaborar un programa de trabajo sobre financiación del comercio durante los preparativos de la Duodécima Conferencia Ministerial (CM12). Subrayó la importancia de la financiación del comercio para las economías en desarrollo, en particular los países menos adelantados, y ofreció su apoyo a los esfuerzos del grupo encaminados a catalizar el apoyo a la financiación del comercio hacia quienes más la necesitan.

Declining private trade credit line availability has had a knock-on effect on low to middle-income countries, which have few government schemes to help importers and exporters and frequently lack export credit agencies or even adequate fiscal resources to make trade finance available to businesses, DG Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told WTO members at the meeting.

“Multilateral development banks provided an estimated record $35 billion in one year, but it is only a dent in the $1.5 trillion trade finance gap,” DG Okonjo-Iweala noted. “Working capital costs including for the financing of trade have increased 30% over the past year on average, 60% in some developing countries. … The rejection rate for trade finance applications of small and medium enterprises is 45% internationally, leading in half of these cases to trade transactions being abandoned,” she said.

DG Okonjo-Iweala reaffirmed that trade finance is both a financial and a trade issue which is pertinent to the business of the WTO. She said: “I’m convinced we have absolutely no way of integrating developing members more effectively into the multilateral trading system without better attention to this issue.”

Fuente: OMC