The EU, for example, said there is "asymmetry" in what they are going to provide in agriculture and what they are going to receive in industrial goods and services as part of the Doha commitments.

U.S. trade representative Ron Kirk maintained that the emerging countries bear the responsibility to conclude the Doha trade negotiations. He said the U.S. faces high unemployment, which requires real market access to big emerging developing countries.

Despite a clear mandate on cotton, which needs to be addressed "ambitiously," "expeditiously," and "specifically" according to July 2004 framework agreement and the Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration of 2005, there is no progress because the U.S. wants to address this issue only after there is an agreement in all other areas.

This is the case precisely because the kind of politics that has now taken a firm grip on South Africa and most other societies around our globe is embedded in a system of neoliberal capitalist social and productive relations whose prime vehicle has been business. The very essence of this system is to construct and run societies based on individualised and privatised material benefit, the ‘ethics’ of accumulative greed and self-aggrandisement as well as institutionalised injustice and inequality. 


Thus, when we take a critical look at the contemporary polipreneurship that has been borne out of this systemic frame, we cannot just focus on the politicians, political parties and private business sectors; we have to also look at ourselves.

In this reality the lines between business and politics have effectively disappeared. There is no foundational difference between: Premier Foods colluding to fix the bread price (and then using their corporate and monetary power to make sure that they mostly get away with it); and, the ANC and its leaders colluding to ensure their self-constructed ‘investment’ vehicle - Chancellor House - directly benefits from government mining policies (and then using their political and institutional power to arrogantly dismiss any wrongdoing and also get away with it).


the presence of tax havens, whether specialising in corporate or maritime services, consistently undermines national and international rule-of-law. This was the case with the capitalist apartheid regime in South Africa, who circumvented oil sanctions through the 'socialist' government of Seychelles. The Iranian revolution evidenced the fall of the US-backed Shah, depriving the apartheid regime of secure oil supplies.

By pyramiding holding companies in jurisdictions characterised by secrecy, the corporate beneficiaries of the apartheid regime were able to access resources and labour on the cheap, while easily navigating global sanctions.

Not much has changed when it comes to the use of secrecy jurisdictions as a means of looting African minerals. Until recently, Sierra Leone’s diamond industry was dominated by two firms: SLDC and Koidu Holdings. The latter was wholly owned by two entities based in tax havens, both of which are directly connected to the UK: Guernsey and the British Virgin Islands (BVI) through BSG Resources, recently implicated as a potential funder for Zimbabwe's Marange fields (via Canadile).

Big Pharma corporations like Pfizer, Novartis, Glaxosmithkline, - as well as over 60% of Fortune 500 multinationals, all maintain entities in Delaware, taking full advantage of ring-fenced legal and financial opacity tools. In addition to banking secrecy and zero disclosure of beneficial owners, Delaware allows for parent companies to establish holding companies within two days, producing nothing, conducting no economic activity in the state, and generally hosting just one shareholder (the parent company). Such entities, allowing the parent company to pay the newly created entity a 'fee' for use of IP, serves as a passive conduit converting taxable income to passive non-taxable profit. The entity's sole purpose is to own and 'manage' laundered income generated from IP.

Intentionally weak and easily circumvented global rules regulating trade facilitates considerable leeway to exploit - and misprice, the value of intangible assets. A Pfizer patent, for instance, may be worth $100 million or a $10: by and large, the company internally determines the value of IP, imputing a 'market price'.

Intra-company mispricing not only distorts and manipulates the proposed neoliberal concept of the market (as most efficient allocator of price and resources), but simultaneously drains developing countries of sustainable tax revenues

because the public distribution system (PDS) is undermined by bureaucracy and corruption, 60m tonnes of grain is lying in warehouses or under plastic sheeting, and, according to the Hindustan Times, 11m tonnes of it has been destroyed by the monsoons.

Since the 1970s green revolution, agricultural production has continued to rise, but not to benefit the hungry. Half of India's children aged under five suffer from malnutrition, and the rate remained stable between 1999 and 2006 despite the economic growth in those years. India is the world's 11th largest economic power but still has more people in poverty than sub-Saharan Africa, even though it has not suffered from civil wars and political crises.

A universal public distribution system would be a life-saver for the hungry, while for the others it would be a form of financial support and social security," explained Jean Drèze, an economist and member of the Right to Food movement. But he estimates the cost of the reform to be more than $21.8 billion. Is the country prepared to devote 1.5% of its GDP for the fight against hunger? The answer will lie in the government's Right to Food Act, which should be revealed before the end of the year.

There is a need for transaction tax on trade in commodity derivatives (financial instruments linked to future prices of underlying assets) and for more schemes to deal with the stabilisation of commodity prices. Panitchpakdi indicated concern over the excess of liquidity driving up the prices of maize and wheat in 2010.

The new scramble for Africa was triggered by a convergence of events: surging demand for biofuels, rising consumption patterns in China and India and the 2008 global food crisis, when the price of corn and wheat tripled, almost overnight. Responding to sudden hyperinflation, rioting and panic buying, at least 30 countries, including Argentina, Vietnam, Brazil, Cambodia and India, banned or sharply reduced food exports. In short order, Japan and South Korea, who import 70 per cent of their grains, joined a parade of countries turning to Africa to lock in means of production beyond their borders.

When it emerged that Daewoo, the South Korean giant, had signed a 99-year lease granting it close to half of Madagascar’s arable land, protests broke out in Antananarivo, the country’s capital, eventually sinking both the deal, and the president.

as Heilberg told the German magazine Der Spiegel after closing the deal in Darfur, “When food becomes scarce, the investor needs a weak state that does not force him to abide by any rules.” Sudan, a dictatorship ranked among the five most corrupt countries on the planet, certainly qualifies. Heilberg’s deal was approved by the deputy commander of Sudan’s People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), the official army of semi-autonomous southern Sudan. “This is Africa,” he recently told Rolling Stone. “The whole place is like one big mafia. I’m like a mafia head. That’s the way it works.”

development finance siphoned from Africa, whether through the extractive industries, or land grabs, are unlikely to be revealed as the IMF scrapped mandatory information exchange. Global watchdogs, such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) remained beholden to high-income nations as a ‘subsidiary’ unit in the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Meanwhile, the International Accounting Standard Board (IASB), founded and finance by the ‘big four’ accounting firms – maintaining units in secrecy jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands – prefers multinationals to self-regulate trade via arms length transfer. What this effectively does is enable multinationals, conducting 60 per cent of global trade within rather than between corporations, to determine the future of entire continents such as Africa, where primary commodities – extracted by corporations, account for 80 per cent of exports.

Studies by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) revealed, ‘Many countries do not have sufficient mechanisms to protect local rights and take account of local interests, livelihoods, and welfare. Moreover, local communities are rarely adequately informed about the land concessions that are made to private companies. Insecure local land rights, inaccessible registration procedures, vaguely defined productive use requirements, legislative gaps, and other factors all too often undermine the position of local people vis-à-vis international actors.’[1]