Rich member governments of the World Trade Organisation are coming under pressure from their third world colleagues to approve a US$1.2bn Food Financing Facility, to provide aid and investment for producers in developing countries who are net food importers. The idea is to protect these countries against problems caused by the liberalisation of the agricultural products trade currently being debated at the WTO. The special fund has been proposed by the Ivory Coast, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Honduras, Jamaica, Kenya, Mauritius, Morocco, Pakistan, Peru, Senegal, Sri Lanka, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, and Venezuela. It would be managed by the WTO, World Bank, IMF, donor and borrowing countries. In discussions at the WTO’s agriculture committee, several developing countries said that the response of developed countries to this proposal “would influence their response to other issues” at the WTO’s November summit in Qatar, such as whether a new wide-ranging general round is launched afterwards.
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