. /.  WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION   
WT/MIN(11)/ST/94 
17 December 2011  
 
(11-6675) 
MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE 
Eighth Session Geneva, 15 - 17 December 2011 Original:   English 
 
  
AFGHANISTAN 
 
Statement by H.E. Dr Anwarulhaq Ahady 
Minister of Commerce and Industry 
(speaking as an Observer) 
  
I would like to begin by expressing my apprecia tion on behalf of the Government and people 
of Afghanistan for this opportunity to address this , the Eighth WTO Ministerial Conference.  It is 
a great honour for me and my country.  Let me also congratulate the Russian Federation, Montenegro, Samoa and Vanuatu for their accession.  
I would like to talk today about Afghanistan 's development prospects, highlight the 
importance of exports in this and the critical role that WTO plays in creating a liberal, fair-trading 
regime for all. 
 
I would also like to take this opportunity to sound a cautiously optimistic note about my 
country.  I am sure you have heard the familiar lit any of difficulties faced by Afghanistan;  however 
there is also another more positive story that fre quently gets obscured by sensationalist headlines 
focusing on the latest atrocity.  Investment, growth  and exports have soared in the last decade.  
Afghanistan's GDP growth between 2003 and 2 009 averaged out at over 12 per cent annually.
1  And it 
looks as if it will maintain this sort of double-digi t growth in 2011 and into 2012.  Our exports grew 
by an exceptional 300 per cent between 2002 to 20072 and have continued grow ing at this stellar pace 
in subsequent years.  
The two challenges that we need to overcome in sustaining this growth relate to, firstly, how 
to move away from being a predominantly agricultural economy to being an economy in which services and manufacturing generate the bulk of GDP;  and, secondly, how to manage the reduction in 
foreign aid and foreign military spending whic h has already started and will accelerate from 
2014 onwards. 
 
We have adopted a two-pronged approach to th is:  firstly, we are looking to develop the 
substantial mineral resources that we possess.  This  will assist us enormously in terms of ensuring the 
medium-term fiscal sustainability of the Afghan Government. 
 
And, secondly, to invest heavily in the devel opment of our SME sectors - particularly through 
encouraging it to move up the value chain and increase exports. 
 
                                                      
1 IMF World Economic Outlook Database, April 2009. 
2 Central Statistics Office, 1381-86.  As reported on the CSO and EPAA websites. WT/MIN(11)/ST/94 
Page 2  
 
  We have completed an SME strategy thro ugh which we hope to generate almost a 
million new industrial jobs in six years.  I believe th e implementation of this strategy with its focus on 
increased exports is critical to Afghanistan's future.  
The strong growth in productivity associated with an export-led strategy for economic 
development is, I believe, the key to our future  prosperity and we see the WTO accession process as 
a key part of this.  
Over the last two years we have actively wo rked to accelerate the WTO accession process.  
We had our first working party meeting in January of this year and we are looking forward to our 
second meeting in March 2012.  We have identified th e reforms required in ou r legislative framework 
necessary to bring it into conformity with WTO re quirements.  We have also begun the development 
of our market access offers on goods and services. 
 
We aim to submit our offer to the WTO in 2012 and launch the bilatera l negotiations required 
shortly afterwards. 
 
Like other late, late industrializers, Afghani stan faces the challenge of developing an 
industrial base in the face of substantial and in some areas overwhelming competition.  A number of 
the strategies pursued by late industrializing countri es in places like East Asia are not available to 
Afghanistan.  In addition, it is my contenti on that at times simplistic prescriptions of the 
Washington Consensus will not, on their own, get us there.  We are already working to improve our 
enabling environment and get government out of the way of business, but, as with elsewhere, this has 
proved to be a necessary but far from sufficien t step for sustained economic development. 
 
Increasingly mainstream economics accepts  that governments can intervene to 
encourage/speed up economic development through th e provision by government of such things as 
knowledge about how to add value, increase exports , underwriting innovation, helping to ameliorate 
risks for the first business to enter into a new area, providing temporary protection to infant industries 
in areas where there are substantia l economies of scale and this protec tion is required to obtain those 
economies of scale.  Thus, in line with this appro ach, we are thinking of applying moderate, sharply 
time-limited, progressively declining, and subject to  detailed assessment of costs and benefits tariff 
protection for items on our sensitive list. 
 
However, in advocating this approach I want to  make it plain that we are not resiling from the 
government's basic strategy for economic growth whic h is pro-market, pro-private sector and which is 
grounded in a liberal trade regime - we already have  the lowest tariffs in the region and we intend to 
keep it competitively low. 
 
To conclude, I believe Afghanistan is still a la nd of opportunity for entrepreneurs.  As we 
make progress on building our infrastructure and as the SME sectors expand and large-scale mining and hydro-carbon extraction projects, come on stream, th e prospects will become bright still.  Exports 
play a very important role in our development st rategy.  Afghanistan has great potential.  And WTO 
accession is a critical step on the path that we need to take if we are to realize this enormous potential. 
 
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