World Trade Organization (WTO) Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said yesterday during the opening of the organization's ministerial conference that a new split between world blocs due to the war in Ukraine could lead to a 5% drop in global gross domestic product (GDP).

If the current geopolitical tensions arising from the war in Ukraine lead the world to a new division into blocks, "this could generate a 5% decrease in the world's Gross Domestic Product (GDP)", Okonjo-Iweala was quoted by some international portals, recalling that in the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 there was a 3.5% recession in the GDP in developed countries.

The leader of the WTO, which today, Monday, convenes the ministerial conference, pointed out that "to this calculation one has to add the losses derived from the reduction of economies of scale, the transition costs for companies and workers, the reallocation of resources, and the regulatory barriers that each block would impose," in addition to social and migratory tensions.

The Nigerian director-general, the first woman to head the WTO, issued this warning on the first of four days of negotiations in Geneva on important trade issues, such as the elimination of subsidies that promote harmful fishing, the suspension of patents on covid-19 vaccines, and measures to alleviate the world food crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine.

According to Efe, one of the WTO's greatest challenges is the need for unanimous approval in the votes that go to the plenary, which in practice means that any country can paralyze the organization's decisions.

Faced with these challenges, Okonjo-Iweala called on all delegations to put their efforts into the negotiations, which will take place "at a time of great crisis and uncertainty," as little progress was made at the last ministerial summit in Buenos Aires in 2017.