Tough task for new WTO chief

The US and Germany are two major members of the G8 and initiators of the trans-Atlantic trade agreement being discussed by the US and the EU. China is one of the world's top trading countries and the most strategically influential developing economy in world trade negotiations. It also represents the BRICS(Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) group of emerging economies that are positioned between the OECD member states and other developing countries in the global economic hierarchy.

Finally, Nigeria not only represents Africa, but also the large number of low-income economies with abundant natural resources and sub-optimal industrial structures, which have, until now, remained marginal players in global trade.

So along with working to build convergence and consensus among WTO members, Azevedo and his deputies will also have to maintain the trade body's strategic significance in a world getting dominated by what the outgoing WTO director-general referred to in his farewell address as "mega-regional" trade deals. Most of these deals, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and trans-Atlantic deal between the US and the EU, are being spearheaded by the OECD member states.

The motivation for the deals comes from the frustration caused by the lack of progress at the WTO. Many of the new regional trade pacts being discussed, as well as bilateral trade agreements either concluded or being negotiated, include issues like intellectual property and government procurements that developing countries are sensitive to. Formalization of more such deals that include these issues may create a situation where the WTO's multilateral trade framework starts reflecting trade architecture very different from those prevailing in regional and bilateral preferential trade agreements.

The new chief of the WTO could have hardly assumed office under more difficult circumstances. He has to not only restore the world's faith in multilateral trade and the WTO's ability to manage it successfully, but also to recharge global trade in order to revive the global economy. Let us hope he succeeds in resurrecting the WTO, which is suffering from a serious crisis of confidence within two decades of its creation.

The author is head of partnership and programme and senior research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies in the National University of Singapore.