Since then, said WTO Director-General Renato Ruggiero, his organisation had concluded basic telecommunications and financial services agreements and implemented an accord on information technology. These include increasing market access for their exports and bolstering their ability to change national laws in line with existing WTO agreements. ''The institutions and human resources for trade administration in our countries have been severely stretched by the demands of implementing our obligations and exercising our rights in the multilateral trading system,'' the ministers wrote. The multilateral trading system had contributed to economic growth over the past 50 years but, they said, but ''our continent continues to be bypassed with regard to the benefits of the remarkable growth and greater global economic integration of recent years, and hence continues to experience marginalisation from the global economy.'' The system's performance should be reassessed in light of Africa's experience and no new expansion of the WTO's workplan passed until existing problems have been tackled, the African ministers argued. Nothing will be ruled out or ruled in at the end of this meeting,'' WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell said. Ruggiero, aware of dissatisfaction as his organisation seeks broad agreement to expand its remit, told ministers, ''We must be unwavering in our efforts to help LDCs increase their participation, both in this organisation and in the trading system as a whole.
Trade accounts for only a small share of economic activity in most LDCs, official figures show.
LDCs' exports have grown far more slowly than world trade over the past 20 years, and their collective share of world merchandise exports consequently has declined. Some 132 countries have sent delegations to the three-day conference here.