. /.  WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  WT/MIN(05)/ST/26 
14 December 2005 
 (05-5989) 
MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE 
Sixth Session 
Hong Kong, 13 - 18 December 2005 Original:   English 
 
 
 
SRI LANKA 
 
Statement by the Honourable Jeyaraj Fernandopulle  
Minister of Trade, Commerce and Consumer Affairs  
 
 
 Last month, people of my country  elected a new government under the leadership of 
His Excellency President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is courageously facing the challenges of achieving 
a lasting and honorable peace after more than two decades of ethnic conflict and rebuilding a country devastated by the Boxing Day Tsunami last year.  This unprecedented disaster left nearly 
50,000 people dead, 75,000 houses fully destroyed, 50,000 partly destroyed and over a million people 
were affected, posing us multi-faceted challenges.  The losses to the fisheries sector and to some 
extent to the tourist
 resorts, other public utilities and infrastr ucture have been excessive.  For the 
recovery plan, the overall increm ental financial needs are estimate d to be around US$1.5 billion. 
  Many countries came to our support.  We are grateful to those governments and their people.  
While thanking the EU for providing duty-free mark et access to apparel exports under the GSP Plus 
Scheme, we regret very much that the other deve loped countries failed to grant duty-free access to 
their markets, even after the Tsunami disaster. 
 
 The village, the periphery, has not been ab le to benefit from the current waves of 
globalization in which the multilateral trading system is  an integral component.  In South Asia alone - 
40 per cent of the population lives on less than $1 a day.  In my country, 25 per cent of the people live below the poverty line.  As a result, the belief of the common man in my part of the world is that 
greater the openness, the more severe the poverty and indebtedness of nations.  The eradication of 
poverty is therefore a shared responsibility for all of us - indeed, it is a moral imperative if we are to 
have a successful conclusion of the present Round. 
 
 Eradicating poverty is one of the prime objectives of
 the new government.  Our firm 
determination, as enumerated in "Mahinda Chinthan a" of HE President Mahinda Rajapaksa is to take 
these vulnerable people out of poverty adopting a path of pro-poor development. 
 
 We set ambitious targets in Doha and made "developmental objectives" at the heart of our 
negotiations.  We promised to offer a better life.   We must live up to those development promises 
made when the Doha Round was launched.   We wish to emphasize that the current practice of applying rules generally for all countries is 
of little benefit to developing, least developed and small economies, as the level of development in 
these countries vary widely.  Therefore, the time has come to rethink whether the universal rules are 
helpful for the promotion of living standa rds of marginalized economies like mine. 
  On agriculture, while many developing countries stand to benefit from the reforms, countries 
like mine stand to lose.  Being a Net Food Importing Developing Country (NFIDC), we are concerned 
with the anticipated price hikes in world food prices following the proposed reforms in global WT/MIN(05)/ST/26 
Page 2  
 
 agricultural trade.  The "Revolving fund" proposed  in the WTO to address the specific problems of 
such countries, has not made much headway. 
 
 Sri Lanka's ceiling binding of agricultural tariff at 50 per cent is a significant contribution we 
made during the Uruguay Round.  Thus our conviction is that we should not be pressurized to 
undertake any further tariff reductions. 
 
 Special product and special safeguard mechanism based on criteria of food security, 
livelihood and rural development needs, covering a minimum of 20 per cent tariff lines should find its 
due place in the final package of agriculture.   On NAMA, we attach highest priority to reduction  or elimination of tariff peaks, high tariffs 
and tariff escalation as well as non-tariff barriers, in particular on products of export interest to 
developing countries.  We are concerned that small countries like mine are increasingly being 
marginalized.  Therefore, we call for extending the same package of duty-free and quota-free access 
recently offered for LDCs to small and vulnerable countries in particular affected by unprecedented 
natural disasters like Tsunami. 
 
 Sri Lanka attaches great importance to the devel opment of her service industries.  With this in 
focus, we made initial offers on certain core se rvice areas namely financial, telecommunication and 
tourism sectors allowing a free flow of FDI into su ch sectors, but to make any improved offers we 
should know what gains are there for us in return.  Unless such tangible market openings are forthcoming from our developed country partners, we have serious doubts
 how we could further 
expand on our commitments in the service sector. 
 
 In this respect, we, like most other developing countries, attach high importance to the 
liberalization in Mode 4, i.e. to allow people wi th skills from developing countries to move and to 
work in the developed countries.  Unfortunately, the progress with regard to  Mode 4 is disappointing.  
In the long run the liberalization in this sector must go beyond the movement of professionals and 
skilled workers. 
 
 It is a moral responsibility of the in ternational community to see that every  citizen in the 
world will have access to affordable medicine as a fundamental right.  Th erefore countries with 
insufficient domestic manufacturing capacities in  pharmaceutical products like Sri Lanka must enjoy 
the rights to source medicine from low cost countries without any restrictions. 
  Let me conclude Mr Chairman by saying that without "a credible development package" for 
us and for the entire developing world, this Round would be tantamount to a "Non Round".  This 
should be avoided at all risk.  Furthermore, a delay in concluding the
 Round would lead to depleting 
the trust placed upon on the multilateral trading sy stem by the global community who may want to 
seek an alternative path.  We earne stly believe this Conference will se t the stage to generate the much 
needed momentum - the launching pad to march towa rds our collective expecta tions bearing in mind 
that the poor and the weaker benefit th e most to live in a dignified manner. 
 
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