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Protectionist measures increased in 2009

29 December 2009 10:44 (UTC +04:00)

Bakuâ€“ APA-Economics. The Group of 20 industrialized and developing economies haven’t kept to their pledge to abstain from protectionist measures, but continue to enact policies that privilege domestic over foreign producers, according to a report by Global Trade AlertÃ§ the Dow Jones Newswires reported.

GTA, which monitors government actions that affect trade, said the flow of measures that discriminate against foreign producers was undiminished in the second half of this year, despite the fact that most leading economies have emerged from recession.
According to GTA, some 297 "beggar-thy-neighbor" policies were pursued in the 12 months after G-20 leaders made their pledge in November 2008, "more than one for every working day of the year."
And the GTA said that when adjusted for the time it takes for protectionist measures to become manifest, the number of new measures announced between July and September "is not far short" of the average for the two previous quarters, while there were no signs of a slowdown in the fourth quarter.
"Prior experience suggests that information about many recent protectionist measures taken by governments is not yet in the public domain," the GTA report said. "The very recent fall off in the number of discriminatory measures is more apparent than real."
The GTA said that the "pipeline" of protectionist measures "could limit the contribution of exports to economic recovery."
However, the GTA acknowledged that protectionist measures implemented over the last year haven’t been as widespread or damaging as those that led to the Great Depression of the 1930s.