Catching up on reform - a challenge to economists



Just followed an APWLD  webinar on the WTO and COVID19.  I had also followed a Groundviews podcast where Sanjana H interviewed Anush Wijesinha, a young Sri Lankan trade economist.  Anush’s core argument seemed to be that Sri Lanka lacked the fiscal space to respond to the pandemic and its aftermath because we were too late to implement the reforms that we should have had in place.  I am not clear what exactly those reforms were, but listening to the webinar just now it struck me that it is not so simple. 

The webinar reminded me that WTO regulations on, for example agriculture goods and services, has systematically decimated domestic agriculture in developing countries and challenged food sovereignty and hurt the livelihoods of small farmers. WTO led liberalization and promotion of FDI in agriculture and natural resources has led to land grabs, seed grabs, water grabs, and natural resource grabs.  It would be interested to know from Anush Wijesinha and others what has been the impact of trade agreements and WTO regulations  on Sri Lanka’s food situation.

Another issue that I heard on webinar was about the WTO role in  the commodification of health – where GATS has commodified care, TRIPS has commodified knowledge and health is seen as a tradeable subject.  The Sri Lankan experience buttresses the argument that only countries that were able to protect public health services from the WTO push towards privatizing health services, were able to effectively deal with the Covid19 virus.  So from a trade economist perspective, what does that mean?

 I remember Anush Wijesinha also suggested that we have to rethink the role of the state.  It is interesting that during the pandemic nobody has left everything to the ‘market’ as one is generally advised to do under neoliberalist ideology.
 So given these and other global contextual factors, in the context of Sri Lanka, what ARE  the reforms that we need to catch up on? Is it reform that entrenches us even further in an economic system that the WTO and the world architecture on trade and trade agreements represent, or do we need to work on  instituting reforms that will take us in a different direction?


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