Statement by H.E. Ms. Andreja Kert

State Secretary of the Ministry of

Economic Development and Technology

Slovenia

At the outset I would like to thank our host – the Government of Indonesia for its warm hospitality and excellent organisation of the 9th Ministerial conference of the WTO here in Bali.

After 12 years of negotiations we are facing new window of opportunity to successfully achieve concrete results in Bali package which can be beneficial to all of us. What is needed now more than ever is just enough concerted political will to reach the final convergence of the Bali package.

It is our sincere wish that this conference will be a turning point in providing some early harvest results as well as necessary stepping stone towards final conclusion of the Doha Development Agenda.

The consequences of possible failure are clear and are simply too difficult to be accepted. Let us show our political will and cooperate with Director-General to walk the last few steps needed.

We have to be aware that on the one hand, the role of multilateral trading system and the WTO organization as such are undermined due to lack of delivering any tangible DDA results. On the other hand, WTO continues to perform well in the areas of dispute settlements, trade policy reviews and technical work related to the prevention of the uncontrolled rise of the trade protectionist measures.

These are the worthy objectives that have to convince us to roll up our sleeves and do our best to achieve palpable results here in Bali.

In addition, we have to be aware that developing countries have great expectations towards DDA and its role as a developing round. Some of issues can be successfully resolved within the Bali development package.

I would like to reiterate our responsibility to deliver results as the developing countries and in particular the LDCs are the most vulnerable to malfunctioning of the multilateral trading system.

Let me finish with my deepest conviction that the win-win situation is almost at hand and it is worth doing our utmost for successful conclusion of the Bali package.  I strongly believe we will all find courage and wisdom to beneficial solution to all of us.