für kicky/many greetings from L. A.

In the European Union, the growth rate in labor productivity, defined as output per unit of labor input, between 1995-2000 slowed to an average of 1.2 percent, down from 2.4 percent in the first half of the decade.

Japan also posted a slower growth rate of less than 1 percent between 1995 and 2000, it said.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil has attributed some of the extraordinary pickup in productivity growth between 1995 and 2000 "due to the expanding role of information and communications technology in the economy."

The ILO report also views as temporary, and unrelated to Sept. 11, the decline in the "new economy" and predicts a new generation of information and communications technology linked economic growth to follow the current downturn.

With regards to other regions, the ILO study highlights labor productivity levels in most Latin American economies have shown little improvements over the past two decades.

"In 1999, the gap in output per person employed between Latin America and the United States was 69 percentage points compared to 59 points in 1980," it said.

However, the report says labor productivity levels for emerging Asian economies have shown a better catch-up performance.

In the last two decades, says the ILO, the emerging Asian economies have posted average productivity growth rates that were "about 2.4 percentage points faster than for the advanced industrial economies and the productivity gap relative to the U.S. improved by more than 5 percentage points."

Value added per person employed in the United States (measured in 1990 U.S. dollars)in 2000 averaged $54,879, up from $48,517 in 1995, the report said.

Similarly, last year value added per person in Italy, $42,986; Germany, $41,859; United Kingdom, $41,054; Japan, $39,768; Korea, $33,855; Poland, $19,016; and Mexico, $18,492.

Moreover, based on the latest data available, value added per person employed in 1998 in China averaged $6,045 and in Taiwan, $37,529.

For other emerging Asian economies, such as Malaysia, value added in 1999 averaged $20,549; Indonesia, $7,299; and India, $4,943.

In 1999 value added per person employed in Argentina averaged $24,252; Brazil, $13,894; and in Chile, $27,765, the ILO said.

Finally, the report notes that employment opportunities in advanced industrial countries in the services sector continue to outpace those in manufacturing and the agricultural sector.

In 2000, the percentage of employment in the United States in the services sector in stood at 74.5 percent; for Canada, 74.1 percent; France, 74 percent; United Kingdom, 72.8 percent; and Japan, 63.1 percent.

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Copyright 2001 by United Press International.

First they had to clear away a last minute deadlock over tins of tuna and bunches of bananas. The EU has long granted trade preferences to the 78 countries of the ACP group, (Africa, Caribbean and Pacific), mostly their former colonies, but these preferences required a waiver under WTO rules.

Thailand claimed this blocked their sales of tinned tuna, and Ecuador said it hurt their exports of bananas. So early Wednesday, negotiators were still working out a special procedure to review all such trade preferences "with a view to their implications for development."

Trade negotiations almost always go down to the wire and beyond, as countries stick to their original negotiating positions until the last moment, hoping for better terms.

This Doha summit was also at the mercy of the domestic politics of two different governments. In France, with presidential elections just six months away, neither the conservative President Jacques Chirac noir the socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin wanted to give way on farm subsidies, fearing the loss of farm votes.

Moreover, the presence of the Green Party in the Jospin coalition meant that France had to accord high priority to getting environmental rules into the WTO.

In India, Vajpayee's coalition government includes 14 separate parties, some of them highly protectionist and deeply suspicious of the WTO as an institution. They see environmental and labor rules as cunning protectionist ploys to safeguard the interests of Western farmers and industries.

Clever footwork by the U.S. Trade Representative Bob Zoellick took the United States out of the line of fire. Zoellick agreed to further negotiations on American anti-dumping laws, without promising to give them up, and also gave some ground on textiles. Japan, which had in the past stood firm with the Europeans on protecting domestic farmers, decided it could accept a phasing out of food export subsidies (since Japan exports virtually none).

This left the EU isolated. Throughout the five days of talks, EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy had cut various side deals on pharmaceutical patents, on fishing subsidies, on labor rights and trade in services, in order to save the EU's agricultural subsidies while launching a new Trade Round.

In the final hours, the fate of summit came down to Lamy versus the Indian trade minister, Murasoli Maran, which was in itself a proxy battle between the EU capital of Brussels and New Delhi, spokesman of the developing world.

"A deal is very do-able, and everybody understands the importance of getting agreement here," an American official told UPI. "Nobody wants to be seen as responsible for failure."