WTO boss: Caribbean can be COVID-19 production centre

As developing nations continue to struggle to get enough COVID-19 jabs for their populations, Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala says there are ongoing discussions with manufacturers to have the vaccines produced in some of those countries.

In fact, she told a Central Bank of Barbados trade discussion she saw no reason the COVID-19 vaccines could not be produced here in the Caribbean.

Two months ago, Prime Minister Mia Mottley promised to push for Barbados to become a hub for manufacturing or bottling COVID-19 vaccines.

“Eighty per cent of the exports of vaccines in the world come from 10 countries and we have seen that when there is a problem, politics trumps humanitarian and social desire so countries will restrict export of vaccines or inputs when they think they are in trouble. So, we have to decentralise this and we have asked the manufacturers to invest more in developing countries and emerging markets so that we can also produce,” said Okonjo-Iweala.

“I don’t see why we cannot have a production centre in the Caribbean, for example, where one of the vaccines or even the therapeutics and diagnostics [are done]. Why can’t we have a centre here?” she added while reporting that the WTO has been working with the vaccine manufacturers to establish a presence in Africa.

Okonjo-Iweala was a guest on a Central Bank awareness session that examined The Role of Trade in Global Public Goods.

She said the rules for vaccine distribution must also be improved.

“I would like to see us at the WTO agree to a set of rules so that in a future pandemic we don’t have to debate issues anymore but automatically some rules, some modalities for being part of the solution will automatically kick in so we could do better,” she said.

Adding that the WTO had a vital role to play in ensuring that supply chains work, the trade official gave the assurance that her organisation was working to get rid of export restrictions and prohibitions to ensure countries that need COVID-19 vaccines get them.

She revealed that at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic there were some 119 export restrictions and prohibitions, but that number has fallen to 45 to date.

“For me, it is still too many but that has been a good job,” Okonjo-Iweala said while acknowledging that manufacturing of vaccines was “very complicated”.

“To manufacture the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine you need 28 components from manufacture to delivery into jabs into arms. Those are manufactured for now in 19 countries at 87 sites. This is very complicated. For Johnson and Johnson, it is 180 components manufactured in about 15 countries and Astrazeneca, 15 countries.”

Okonjo-Iweala also pointed to the need for improvements in intellectual property rights and patents.

“We have two schools of thought at the WTO among our 64 members. Over 100 developing countries and emerging markets want to have a waiver so they can have access to intellectual property rights to manufacture the vaccines.

“There are others who feel this would disincentivise research and production so we don’t agree…. As WTO Director-General I don’t take sides, I simply need to save lives and I believe all WTO members want that. But I think we need a compromise where the two sides come to the middle so we can have better access to intellectual property whilst not disincentivising research and production. We are working on it right now,” Okonjo-Iweala explained. (MM)