For developing countries much ado about nothing much

摘要

With this New Year 1996 issue of Ceres we inaugurate a regular feature on production and trade of commodities which play a determinate role in the lives of rural people. First, an update on whether the new World Trade Organization has affected much change in trade in agricultural, fishery and forestry products. A year ago the world started to live by the hard-won terms of the Final Act of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations under the General Agree-ment on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). That signed agreement, now administered by the World Trade Organization, released torrents of enthusiasm, speculation and hope as to its liberalizing effects on world trade. And all for what? Was it worth seven long years of turbulent negotiations and allthe headlines dedicated to its inauguration? Has there been a revolution in agricultural trade to open markets through radical dismantling of trade barriers? What has been the impact of the Uruguay Round on the production, trade and prices of commodities?