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'World Bank and the International Monetary Fund had to be more global'

The next head of the World Trade Organisation urged international agencies and rich countries on Friday to be more sympathetic to developing nations to speed up the opening of emerging markets.

WTO Director-General-designate Supachai Panitchpakdi told a business seminar that institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund had to be "more global".

"These are global institutions but they do not always have a global view and global management," Supachai said in a speech on impact of globalisation on Asian nations.

"They should be accordingly managed to serve the international, global community."

Supachai, who will take over the helm of the WTO next year, said lack of participation by poor countries in these agencies, including the world trade body, had been a major factor hampering free trade around the world.

"I don't think the voices of the rest of the world vis-a-vis the more advanced countries would be actually heard. Sometimes, they might be heard, but easily forgotten. Sometimes they might be heard but not understood."

One example of a lack of understanding of the problems faced by the developing world was the insistence by some rich countries on certain labour and environmental standards that poorer countries could not afford to meet.

"We should not penalise countries by closing down their market access because they can't bring up financial resources to abide by the international standards," he said.

"If the trade concessions are withheld, they would be marginalised and impoverished even further," he said.

Supachai said rich nations should also avoid hypocrisy.

"The mentality of 'Do it as I say, but don't do it as I do. I tell you to open up your market, I tell you to be more liberalised, I tell you to reform your legal provisions, but what I do is different,' must be a thing of the past," he said.

Supachai will take over as WTO director general from New Zealand's Mike Moore when the latter's three-year term expires in September 2002.

After six days of haggling in Qatar early this month, trade ministers from the world's most powerful economies and least developed nations said "broad and balanced" negotiations would begin next year to liberalise global commerce.

The talks will cover a wide range of issues from cutting farm subsidies and industrial tariffs to tackling a host of other barriers to trade.

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