Bye Bye, Buenos Aires: ICAC Completes 70th Plenary Meeting

Hundreds of cotton and textile professionals from 39 countries around the globe are back in their homes today, but many of them have left their hearts in beautiful Argentina. That’s what happens when you spend a week in Buenos Aires, which was the host city of the recently completed International Cotton Advisory Committee’s (ICAC) 70th Plenary Meeting, held from Sept. 4-10. Nearly 500 participants from 39 countries and seven international organizations were in attendance.
The theme of the event – “Public and Private Sector Roles in the Cotton Value Chain: Ensuring Both Efficiency and Fairness” – was carried throughout the program, which featured:

• methods and institutions for technology development and transfer to ensure the success of small and medium-sized producers,
• a showcase of successful farmer’s organizations in six countries and drew conclusions regarding the factors leading to the success of such organizations,
• an exploration of the difficulties and benefits for farmers using organic production practices,
• a report from the Secretariat on the outlook for world cotton production, consumption, trade and stocks, as well as information on strategies for managing price, and
• a technical seminar on the topic of technological innovations for sustainable development,
• an overview of mill use of cotton in Argentina, which has risen substantially in the past decade, and
• details about Argentina’s policies for textile industry growth.

The member governments of ICAC agreed that stronger national efforts to gather and report statistics on cotton production, consumption and stocks would enhance transparency and provide additional information for decision making. There was agreement that defaults on contracts, trade-distorting measures by governments and other factors contribute to price volatility. The Committee recommended the use of metric measures to standardize statistics on cotton.

The Committee heard that the Doha Round is “deadlocked and paralyzed,” but ICAC believe that the Doha Round cannot be allowed to die because its issues remain important and must be solved. ICAC underscored the importance of trade policy as a key companion to fiscal and monetary policies in facilitating world economic growth and development.