GENEVA – The World Trade Organisation (WTO) yesterday warned that global disparities in coronavirus vaccine rates could impact worldwide economic recovery.
“World trade and output have recovered faster than expected since the second half of 2020 after falling sharply during the first wave of the pandemic,” WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said while presenting a semi-annual report on the state of world trade.
“The WTO’s most recent forecast expects the volume of merchandise trade to increase by 8% in 2021 and 4% in 2022,” she said.
Okonjo-Iweala said “trade performance is diverging significantly across regions, with unequal access to Covid-19 vaccines a major factor in the disparities”.
“This is especially true for low-income countries, where barely over 1% of their populations has received even one dose,” she said.
“Failure to ensure global access to vaccines poses a serious threat to the global economy and to public health.”
The International Monetary Fund also sounded a similar warning on Tuesday, saying “vaccine access has emerged as the principal fault line along which the global recovery splits into two blocs”.
The WTO chief said that despite the value of global merchandise trade shrinking by around 8% in 2020, trade in medical supplies increased by 16% and personal protective equipment by nearly 50%.
“However, some pandemic-related trade restrictions do remain in place, and the challenge is to ensure that they are indeed transparent and temporary,” she said.
Two days ago WTO countries failed to agree a proposal to suspend intellectual property rights on Covid-19 vaccines to boost production and fill a void in developing nations.
India and South Africa brought forward the idea in October and can count on the backing of several dozen countries, including, notably, the United States and China.
Opponents of the idea included European countries, Japan and South Korea.
Members will hold an informal meeting in early September to discuss the state of play, followed by a formal meeting on October 13 and 14. – AFP, July 30, 2021
