If the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) 11th Ministerial Conference did not exist there would be little reason to invent it. The two-yearly cycle of Ministerials prescribed in the WTO’s founding Agreement has helped to raise expectations of concrete results each time, with the accompanying risk of high-profile failure.

The last two Ministerials, at Bali in 2013 and Nairobi in 2015, achieved a degree of success by salvaging elements of the shipwrecked Doha Development Agenda that were still serviceable, Trade Facilitation and the prohibition of agricultural Export Subsidies. However there are no such useful items to hand this time. The scope for success is correspondingly more limited and the risks are that much greater.

…Evan Rogerson is the former Director of the Agriculture and Commodities Division of the WTO Secretariat, Geneva. He contributed this specially to RSIS Commentary.