The initial focus of the GATT was to remove bad policies: the excess of trade restrictions that built up during the world recession of the 1930s and the war years of the 1940s. While considerable political courage and diplomatic skill were needed to make the necessary decisions, implementing them, e.g., changing the tariff rates, required no more than the stroke of a minister's or a legislature's pen. A lot of money will flow in different directions because of tariff cuts, but it costs nothing to cut the tariffs.

More is involved in the implementation of WTO rules on customs valuation, intellectual property rights and SPS than the simple removal of bad policies. Implementation is about creating infrastructure, about creating the institutions that facilitate economic activity. Intellectual property rights implementation, for example, will, like tariff reductions, cause money to flow in different directions. But it costs money to implement IPR. Implementation involves investment: purchase and installation of equipment and procedures, training of staff, etc.

To provide specificity to this point and to provide an indication of the scope and cost of investments that may be involved in implementing Uruguay Round commitments, we will review (primarily) World Bank experience with customs reform, with application of sanitary and phytosanitary standards, and with installation of systems of intellectual property rights. One of the lessons that emerges from this review is that the scope of what the WTO regulates is narrower than the scope of what must be done to make development sense out of implementation. For example customs valuation versus customs reform - it helps little to change customs valuation procedures if containers still stay on the dock for 60 days.

# **3. THE URUGUAY ROUND GENERATED NO LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRY "OWNERSHIP" OF THE RULES**

"Ownership" of the rules is an important element in the functioning of any system of rules; particularly important in systems such as the WTO, where the central organization has limited power to enforce. Building among members a solid sense of - ownership of such rules begins with participation in establishing them for WTO rules, with effective participation in the WTO negotiations in which the rules were agreed.

The African Economic Research Consortium has conducted an evaluation of subSaharan African countries' participation in the rules making exercises of the Uruguay Round and has found that this participation was minimal. These countries lacked the capacity to engage substantively on the wide range of issues that the Uruguay Round included. The AERC evaluation identified weaknesses at three levels:

1. Geneva delegations were small and lacked persons with the technical backgrounds needed to participate effectively. A competent diplomat without the backing of a technical staff was not an effective delegation.<sup>4</sup>

- 4 Of 65 developing country GATT/WTO members when the Uruguay Round began, 20 did not have delegations in Geneva. Of the 20, 15 were represented from embassies in other European cities, and _5_ by delegations based in their national capitals. Furthermore, developing country delegations were notably smaller than those of the industrial countries. In 1987, when the Uruguay Round began, the

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