Deal to boost global trade reached at WTO summit

A deal to boost global trade has been approved by the World Trade Organization’s 159 member economies for the first time in nearly two decades, keeping alive the possibility that a broader agreement to create a level playing field for rich and poor countries can be reached in the future.

WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo shed tears during the summit’s closing ceremony on Saturday as he thanked host nation Indonesia and his wife.

“For the first time in history, the WTO has finally delivered” on large scale negotiations, he said.

Trade ministers had come to the four-day WTO meeting on the resort island of Bali with little hope that an agreement would be reached.

The talks were threatened at the eleventh hour when Cuba objected to removal of a reference to the decades-long US trade embargo that Cuba wants lifted.

India had also been an obstacle because of its vociferous objections to provisions that might endanger grain subsidies aimed at ensuring its poor get enough to eat. WTO members gave developing nations a temporary dispensation from subsidy limits, shelving the issue for negotiations at a later time.