Sri Lanka must provide robust defence of the multilateral trading system opined Dr. Ganeshan Wignaraja, the Chair of the Global Economy Programme at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute of International Relations and Strategic Studies (LKI).
In a post in their website in view of the World Trade Organization (WTO) ongoing 11th Ministerial Conference in Argentina he stressed that Sri Lanka must lobby other governments to ensure a robust defence of the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Mechanism( DSM) in Buenos Aires, while putting its support behind sensible reforms to moderate the US position.
As a small open economy, Sri Lanka benefits significantly from being able to engage with economies many times its size on an equal basis through the WTO. This is one important reason why Sri Lanka was a founding member of the WTO in 1995.
“What’s more, Sri Lanka is pursuing several free trade agreements (FTA) with China, India and Singapore and may have to use the DSM to resolve future disputes with FTA partners.”
E-commerce also has substantial economic potential for Sri Lanka as the world economy transits to the so-called “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (based on digitisation and artificial intelligence). The IT sector in Sri Lanka already employs around 85,000 people and generated export revenue of $900 million last year.
However, discussions of international trade rules remain in their infancy. There is little agreement on what exactly constitutes e-commerce, and several developing economies have voiced concerns about whether they have much to gain from an agreement when they have limited access to technology.
Broadband costs in many developing economies are also high relative to advanced economies. As such, e-commerce seems more likely to be a prime candidate for a plurilateral or sector-specific agreement among like-minded economies in the future rather than a full-scale multilateral deal in Buenos Aires.
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