President Muhammadu Buhari has urged the world’s developed countries to grant duty-free and quota-free market access for exports from the world’s 46-least developed countries (LDCs) in order to promote fairness and boost the global merchandize trade.
Buhari, who was quoted as making the call in a statement by his media aide, Garba Shehu, during the United Nations Conference of Least Developed Countries in Doha, Qatar, pointed out that adopting the fiscal option would ensure the competiveness of the affected poor countries in the global trade space.
The President also rued the current structure of the global financial system for encouraging unsustainable external debt burden on the most vulnerable countries, pointing out that such a system will make it very difficult for the LDCs to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs).
Buhari advocated the need for modalities that will facilitate transit cooperation, transfer of technologies, and access to global e-commerce platforms, including reduction of tariffs based on their criticality to the integration of the LDCs into the regional and global value chains and communications technology services in order to enhance the global ecosystem.
He said: “The adoption of a global coordination mechanism to systematically monitor illicit financial flows and engender support for a United Nations International Convention on tax matters to eliminate base erosion and profit shifting, tax evasion, capital gains tax and other tax abuses is essential to achieving the SDGs and promoting security and economic prosperity.”
Speaking on Nigeria’s expectations from the Conference, the Nigerian leader expressed optimism that the Doha Programme of Action would translate to improved exports from LDCs by 2031 through the facilitation of their access to foreign markets in line with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Facilitation Agreement.
Buhari, who recalled that the 17 SDGs were adopted in 2015 by the world leaders, lamented that eight years after the adoption of the laudable goals, the possibility of achieving the goals, especially by the LDCs, remained bleak.
He identified some of the constraints hampering the achievement of the laudable goals as including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change risks as well as the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, adding that the LDCs are often faced with developmental vulnerabilities and challenges that are not always of their making.
As a strategic step towards mitigating the negative impacts of the identified ugly developments on the LDCs, Buhari tasked the developed countries, civil society actors, the organized private sector and the business community to collaborate with the LDCs to provide necessary resources and capacity to enable them achieve developmental outcomes in the economic, social and environmental aspects of the 2030 SDGs.
