WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION   
WT/MIN(11)/ST/118 
16 December 2011 
 (11-6869) 
MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE 
Eighth Session Geneva, 15 - 17 December 2011 Original:   English 
 
  
SOUTH AFRICA 
 
Statement by Dr. Rob Davies 
Minister of Trade and Industry 
 
 
South Africa associates itself with the Statements made by the Friends of Development, the 
Africa Group, the BRICS, the G20 and the ACP. 
 
We welcome the Russian Federation to the WTO after its 18 year accession journey, and we 
look forward to working closely with Russia in th is Organisation as a fellow Member of the BRICS.  
We also welcome the accessions of Montenegro, Vanuatu and Samoa.  
We meet at this eighth Ministerial Conference of the WTO against the background of what 
the Director-General of the WTO has correctly ca lled an "impasse" in the Doha Round negotiations.  
This has led some of our Members to raise fundame ntal questions about the validity of the exercise 
we have been engaged in over the past decade, and it is to this issue that we want to address our 
remarks.   
It is worth recalling some of the key principles we agreed to at Doha in 2001.  In Paragraph 2 
of the Doha Declaration we agreed to place the need s and interests of developing countries at the heart 
of the Doha Work Programme.  In Paragraph 12 we agreed to "address a number of implementation problems of developing countries" because we recognised that the agreements inherited from the Uruguay Round were imbalanced and bi ased against developing countries.  
 
In Paragraph 44 we agreed that "Special and Differential Treatment is an essential part of 
WTO agreements" and went further to agree that these provisions need strengthening to make them 
"more precise, effective and operational".  Importantly too, we agreed that Agri culture would be at the 
centre of the Doha Development Agenda. In NAMA, we  agreed that in addition to the principles of 
Special and Differential Treatment, we would apply the principle of Less Than Full Reciprocity.  In 
Hong Kong we took this a step further, and agreed in Paragraph 24 of that Declaration that the level 
of ambition in NAMA shall be comparable to Agriculture.  
This core mandate remains as valid today at the start of the second decade of the 21
st century 
as it was at the start of the first decade.  
 
By July 2008 the Doha Development Agenda negotiations had advanced although, in South 
Africa's view, the texts produced in July a nd December were unbalanced . Onerous demands in 
NAMA on South Africa and other developing countries contrasted with modest commitments for developed countries in agriculture.   
Nevertheless, we stated in our intervention at the seventh WTO Ministerial Conference: 
"Despite these reservations we have  been willing to work to see whether, on the basis of the existing WT/MIN(11)/ST/118 
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  texts, the specific problems posed for South Africa and the Southern African Customs Union, arising 
from the historic injustice of South Africa's classification in the Uruguay Round as a 'developed country', can be resolved in a fair manner."   
The main reason for the current impasse, in our  view, has been the insistence of certain 
Members for ever more market access from so-called emerging countries, beyond agreed mandates.  
The demand that so-called emerging developing economies must make add itional commitments is 
premised on the fact that these economies have strong rates of economic growth and shares of global trade.  In essence, what is demanded is that the differentiation in the levels of commitment between 
emerging economies and rich countries should be reduced significantly. 
 
The reasoning is false. On any indicator – GDP per capita, human development or 
manufacturing value-added – emerging economies remain developing countries and they face 
enormous developmental challenges, poverty an d inequality and thus require Less Than Full 
Reciprocity.    
 
Earlier this year, South Africa together with other Members argued that in the context of the 
current deadlock we should deliver on the promi ses made to the poorest Members of the WTO in 
Hong Kong and address the concerns of the Cotton 4 and the LDCs.  Even progress on these issues was frustrated by the series of linkages made by de veloped countries that have been unable to deliver 
without seeking concessions in return. 
 
In response to the current impasse, some de veloped country Members have called for "new 
pathways" and "new approaches".  These Members ha ve also called for the WTO to take on "new 
issues" in its negotiating programme.  In our view, this is not the way forward. 
 
South Africa believes that this Conference s hould reaffirm that the Doha Development 
Mandate remains as relevant today as it was ten years ago, and that the fundamental priority is to 
redress the imbalances and inequities that continue to disadvantage developing countries.  There is, in 
our view, no way forward other than to move ahea d with rebalancing the global trading system in 
favour of developing countries.  We also believe the LDC Package that Memb ers failed to agree in 
July this year, yet again, must be delivered as a matter of priority in any new work programme 
embarked on. 
 
The so-called "new approaches" being sought by  some developed countries must not become 
yet another attempt to obtain additional market access from developing countries beyond the Doha 
mandate.  In our view, plurilateral processes will undermine the principles of multilateralism, 
transparency and inclusiveness, and will margina lise many of the weakest and most vulnerable 
developing countries from rule-making in the WT O. For these reasons, we cannot support such 
options as constituting viable "new approaches".   
While we recognize that the WTO provides a fo rum for discussing trade-related issues, we 
insist any proposal for introducing new issues onto the WTO Agenda should be taken up in 
accordance with the rules and procedures of the Or ganization.  It is not reasonable to expect 
developing countries to seriously discuss new issues when the issues that are of paramount importance to them, particularly the poorest amongst them, remain unresolved.   
We support the approach to resisting protec tionism as enunciated in Statements by the 
developing country groups we are part of.  We  acknowledge that WTO rules have contributed to 
keeping markets open in the context of growing pressures arising from the global downturn.  But we insist that it is imperative to recognize that protec tionist measures fall within and outside the remit of 
WTO disciplines.    WT/MIN(11)/ST/118 
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  Moreover, WTO rules themselves provide hard won policy space to its Members, particularly 
developing countries.  We therefore cannot support calls that amount to developing countries being 
required to renounce legitimate policy space, while developed countries can resort to measures with 
the same effect but that lie outside the remit of WTO disciplines.  We believe that the WTO monitoring function should accordingly only call to account those measures by Members that violate 
WTO commitments.   
 
South Africa, in short, remains committed to participating and concluding a Development 
Round based on the mandate agreed to in Doha. If the world is not at this moment ready to conclude 
such a process, we need to wait until it is. 
 
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