Call for liberalisation of air cargo market

A THREE-WAY discussion has just taken place between The International Air Cargo Association (Tiaca), the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) on the subject of liberalising access to the air cargo market and how such a move will benefit global trade. This at a time when the WTO is in the process of reviewing the annex to the general agreement on trade and services (GATS) – allowing WTO members to negotiate access to their trading partners’ markets on a multilateral basis. In a Geneva seminar address to delegates from 150 WTO member countries, Ulrich Ogiermann, vicechairman of Tiaca and CEO of Cargolux Airlines, said the current bilateral system was far from perfect. He added that the need to obtain explicit approval by governments for every operation was a lengthy process and not necessarily compatible with the economic requirements of trading countries or carriers’ business flows. Ogiermann also called for an urgent overhaul of a system that he said dates back to the Chicago Convention in 1944 – a time when regulations were mainly driven by the desire to control competition in a post- war environment. Today, he added, the principles of the convention with regards to entry, price and capacity were “out of place and time”. Tiaca’s presentation to the WTO came just days after its latest working paper – titled “The case for liberalising access to the air cargo market – was submitted to ICAO's economic commission."