Bangladesh wins unlikely trade victory at WTO talks

It's not every day that a poor country like Bangladesh gets to throw its weight around in trade talks with the world's most powerful nations - and win.

But Dhaka's representatives at the World Trade Organisation summit in Hong Kong this week fought off powerful American lobbyists - textile and cotton producers - to gain free access to the vast US market.

The EU has already opened its markets to the world's poorest nations, but Washington had been asking for limits, especially on clothing products from Bangladesh.

Nearly half Bangladesh's population of 135 million lives below the poverty line as measured by income, consumption and ability to meet basic human needs, making it one of the poorest countries in the world.

Thecountry's Commerce Minister promised to bring the entire trade negotiations down around him by vetoing anything less than free access to Western markets. Success in the trade talks is still far from assured, but three groups of the world's poorest countries have banded together to push hard on the issue.

Bangladesh is one of the most competitive countries when it comes to quality knitwear. In Hong Kong it exploited the commitment of the EU and US to improving access of developing countries to free trade in order to win duty-free and quota-free access for its apparel to these markets.

Success at the WTO talks - seen as a vital spur to world trade and development - has hinged on acceptance by 149 ministers of a broad package of development measures.

Failure to agree on measures to lift the world's poorest countries out of poverty would open the West to accusations of hypocrisy.

The US and EU have promised to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on helping poor countries promote their goods abroad. That was the easy bit of the trade negotiations. The sticking point has been disagreement over offering the poorest members of the WTO the right to export a range of products to the West duty free - no matter what rules were established for other countries which are not so poor.

Nations representing more than 70 per cent of the WTO's 149 members insisted that any deal struck must place their interests at its heart.