Press release number: IFAD 02/04

President of Burkina Faso, Mr Blaise Compaoré,
to deliver keynote address

Rome, Monday, 16 February 2004 – The timely and often contentious issue of international trade will be a major theme of the 27th Session of IFAD’s annual Governing Council meeting, which will take place this week, 18 – 19 February, at the Palazzo dei Congressi in Rome.

While the role of trade in economic growth and development has long been recognized, its implications for poverty reduction are gaining growing attention. The international trade of agricultural products is especially relevant to the lives of rural poor people because food crops are their main products and food and labour markets are vital to their survival.

But the world’s current agricultural trade system – with its subsidies, protective tariffs and trade barriers – can work against the rural poor by making it impossible for them to compete in the international marketplace. Poor farmers’ goods are often shut out of richer countries, while subsidized agricultural products from rich countries are sold at or even below production cost in their own local markets.

“The poor performance of Africa’s agricultural sector stems in large part from the inequalities that pervade international trade relations,” says His Excellency Blaise Compaoré, President of Burkina Faso, and the keynote speaker at a debate on trade and rural development.

In Burkina Faso, for instance, cotton production has increased four-fold in the past seven years – accounting for more than 15 percent of the country’s cultivated land – and international demand has pushed world prices for the fibre up to a five-year high. Still, cotton producers in Burkina Faso and elsewhere in West Africa claim to be losing USD 150 million a year in export earnings as a result of subsidies.

“It’s now widely recognized that subsidies and protectionist trade policies are damaging to developing countries,” says Lennart Båge, president of IFAD. “Creating a level playing field is an important step the international community can take to fight poverty. Markets need to work for poverty eradication, not against poverty eradication.”

But establishing more equitable pricing systems is only a part of the solution, says Mr Båge; the other part lies in addressing the policy, institutional and material constraints in developing countries that work against empowerment of rural poor people.

To better understand these constraints and foster the kinds of partnerships and approaches needed to create sustainable responses, the meeting will feature a panel discussion, “Trade and Rural Development: Opportunities and Challenges for the Rural Poor,” on Wednesday at 15:00.

There will also be six regional roundtable discussions on Thursday morning from 10:30 to 13:00:

• Asia and the Pacific: “Rural Enterprises and Poverty Reduction”
• Central Eastern Europe and Newly Independent States: “Promoting Farmers’ Access to Markets in Transitional Economies”
• Eastern and Southern Africa: “Sector-wide Approaches and Budget Support Mechanisms: Challenges and Opportunities for Rural Development”
• Latin America and the Caribbean: “Remittances and Rural Development”
• Near East and North Africa: “Managing Water Scarcity”
• Western and Central Africa: “Rural Finance”