Seattle shockwaves still rattle businesspeople

A recent meeting of Pacific basin corporate leaders revealed that the region’s business community is still reeling from the WTO’s failure last year to launch a new round of global trade talks.

The annual general meeting of the Pacific Basin Economic Council (PBEC), representing more than 1,000 companies from 20 economies, produced exhortations to participants to bang the drum for free trade and economic globalisation.

The three-day session also adopted an appeal to members of the World Trade Organisation to show more flexibility.

What continues to rankle PBEC members are accusations - voiced in

Seattle by non governmental organisations and street protesters - that the WTO and the unfettered flow of goods and capital across national boundaries it advocates harm the interests of poor people, workers and the environment.

The international business community was “shell-shocked” by the events in Seattle and proved unable to mount a credible defense of the WTO, he said.

“We need to polish our image if we are to compete effectively with the many other non-governmental entities and against their anti-globalisation rhetoric.”

Barshefsky assured the session here that “the core vision of the trading system is right. Opening markets in past decades has sparked

growth, reduced poverty and strengthened peace.

And to begin reversing the work we have done would be irresponsible and damaging in the extreme.”

But even from within PBEC voices were raised in

Honolulu against

globalisation as it is currently practiced and

promoted by the WTO.

“The current belief by

the global community that

countries must embrace liberalisation and adopt global rules and development would then follow has not proven true,” Tan Sri Azman Hashim, chairman of the Arab-Malaysian Banking Group, told delegates. “It would seem that the current practices in trade and investment have difficulties in distributing wealth equitably,” he said. ■