This issue of the South Bulletin reports on the meeting between the South Centre’s Chairman, Mr. Benjamin Mkapa, and China’s President, Mr. Xi JinPing, held in Tanzania.

Mr. Mkapa explained the work and priorities of the Centre and President Xi praised the efforts of the Centre in promoting South-South cooperation and in increasing the representation of the Centre, and said China would continue to provide help to the Centre.

This issue of South Bulletin focuses on trade – the WTO impasse and the possible roads ahead, the multilateral trading system and current topical WTO issues; and the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings held in Tokyo on 9-14 October 2012.

This issue of South Bulletin focuses on the deep impasse in the World Trade Organization’s Doha negotiations. The "crunch time" has come for these talks.  Although political leaders in the G20 pledged to conclude the talks by 2011, this is not likely to happen because there are still big gaps between the positions of developed and developing countries.