region because they can affect the region's access to other markets and the sharing of the gains from expanded trade. At the same time, the price of late entry can be high, es­pecially for small states which tend to be open and highly trade-dependent. Many developing countries need policy flexibility to support and promote their enterprises, invest­ments in production and marketing and export expansion and diversification for this reason. Nonetheless, latecomers to WTO membership now face more stringent policy condi­tions than earlier ones. Under its accession terms, Tonga, for example, is committed to lowering trade barriers, ex­panding market access for foreign goods to bind all tariff lines at a level lower than most other developing countries. Moreover, extensive concessions were also made with re­gard to services in sectors such as health, education, finance and telecommunications. Oxfam described these accession concessions as "eye watering" and "the worst terms ever offered to any country" (Manduna, 2006). Concern about similarly harsh terms caused Vanuatu to baulk at signing the accession agreement after negotiating entry in 2001.
     Apart from terms of entry, smaller states face many dif­ficulties in spite of arrangements to render them technical assistance and in spite of the range of agreements which pay special attention to them such as EBA, the GSPs of the US and Japan, SAPTA (SAARC Preferential Trading Arrange­ment), the Bangkok Arrangement, the Thailand-Bangladesh Preferential Trade Arrangement and the AFTA. Writing on the challenges of the Rules of Origin in particular, the Cen­tre for Policy Dialogue has suggested that ESAP LDCs and Bangladesh and Cambodia in particular, engage more pro-actively in the negotiations on agriculture.
     For the region as a whole, leaders will need to ensure that changes, including the AoA reforms, take into account their impact on the divergent agricultural sector/s in the region. Additionally, ways will need to be found to make the pro­cess of liberalization politically palatable in circumstances where it inevitably generates winners and losers. Provision of technical assistance by the more advanced states to the less advanced is one way of approaching this need because it is usually the latter which can ill-afford to bear the costs.
     However, states are not the only parties in need of as­sistance. If the desired changes in the global trade environ­ment, namely liberalization, global trade integration and the information and communication revolution, are to work to the benefit of the rural economy, the capacities of various actors and especially the poor will need to be strengthened. The increasing complexity of these trading and marketing

Table 5-2. Ranking of selected regional trade agreements by degree liberalization of trade.

Note: Most liberalizing = 1.
Source: Adams et al., 2003.

activities will challenge the resources of the traditional ac­tors involved in trade and in economic policy in the region. In order to be in a position to successfully survive in such an environment, the capacities of all the stakeholders in the region will need to be enhanced, including those allowing stakeholders to take advantage of the market, to react to new or changing marketing opportunities, to meet chang­ing health standards to communicate in the domain of the internet, etc. Capacities of farmers, researchers, local gov­ernments, extension workers, financial institutions, local entrepreneurs and market agents, agroindustry and NGOs may be enhanced through training, professional exchange and vocational education.
     Efforts in the areas of research, policy and governance and extension and training could include: (1) traditional and emerging technologies, (2) international regulations, IPRs, trade negotiations, institutional reforms, (3) support systems not limited to production such as organizational, marketing, entrepreneurship to farmers, producer groups and NGOs and (4) the non-farm rural sector.