WORLD leaders on Friday called for the rapid conclusion of a global free trade deal, saying this would amount to a cost-free stimulus for the economy.<\/p>\n
British Prime Minister David Cameron told the Davos gathering of business and political elite: ‘This is a stimulus that doesn’t cost money, so it’s a stimulus that we need.’<\/p>\n
Sharing the same panel, German Chancellor Angela Merkel added: ‘The cheapest way to boost our competitiveness… is free trade.’<\/p>\n
Launched in the Qatari capital a decade ago, the Doha Round of talks have foundered amid disagreements between developed and developing nations on cuts to be imposed on tariffs of industrial goods and agriculture subsidies.<\/p>\n
Mr Cameron made a strong push for negotiators to move towards a deal this year before the next annual Davos meeting, saying: ‘If we come back and we’re still talking about it, then I think that would be hopeless… I do believe that this can be done. If everyone puts a bit more on the table and make the deal a bit bigger then this can happen. This has to be the year in which it happens, we cannot go on after a decade with another year.’<\/p>\n
‘So there is no ‘later’ as far as I’m concerned. No one should hold anything back for future negotiations.’ The British PM said earlier in a separate session that 2011 is a ‘make or break year’ on concluding the WTO Doha Round. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WORLD leaders on Friday called for the rapid conclusion of a global free trade deal, saying this would amount to a cost-free stimulus for the economy. British Prime Minister David Cameron told the Davos gathering of business and political elite: ‘This is a stimulus that doesn’t cost money, so it’s a stimulus that we need.’ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions\/218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}