With the US economy recovering only slowly, Europe sluggish and Japan still in a slump, crucial trade talks in Mexico this week could give the world economy a ray of hope.
The World Trade Organisation will try at the Caribbean beach resort of Cancun to solve thorny trade issues that have prevented its 146 member nations from striking a comprehensive world trade deal as planned by the end of next year.
"If we see a multilateral agreement coming out, there could be at least a reinforcement that the global environment is going to be a better place," World Bank economist Richard Newfarmer said of the Cancun talks.
On the downside, British Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt has warned that failure at Cancun would be "disastrous" for the world economy.
In the long-term, a successful deal to liberalise trade could lift 144 million people who earn less than $2 a day out of poverty and increase personal incomes worldwide by up to $520 billion by the year 2015, the World Bank said in a report last week.
But a planned global trade pact by the end of 2004 is by no means guaranteed and the Cancun talks between Wednesday and Sunday are already shaping up as a battle between rich countries and mostly poor nations.
Agriculture is the toughest issue with nations like India, China and Brazil seeking deep cuts in the $300 billion of farming subsidies given out annually, particularly the United States and the European Union.
A stinging verbal attack last week by European Union Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler on the poor nations seeking subsidy cuts do not augur well for the Cancun negotiations.
"If they want to do business, they should come back to mother earth. If they choose to continue their space odyssey, they will not get the stars, they will not get the moon, they will simply end up with empty hands," he told journalists.
He said Europe's farmers should not be punished just because they come from rich countries.
The WTO members will also try to agree on goals for reducing industrial tariffs and on a number of other divisive issues, such as whether to negotiate new international rules covering investment and national competition policies.
"Maybe there will be a fair amount of arm twisting with the rich countries offering a cut in some agricultural subsidies in exchange for something on investment and I think poor countries are going to be stuck between a rock and a hard place," said Sam Bartlatt, a spokesman for the Oxfam development agency.
Mexican officials say security will be tight at the meeting's venue, a convention centre on a sandy stretch of land on the turquoise waters of the Caribbean.
Mexican warships are patrolling offshore and police will turn out in numbers to prevent a repeat of the street violence that marred a similar WTO meeting in Seattle in 1999.
Local authorities expect tens of thousands of activists, from US environmentalists to corn-growing Mexican peasants, at anti-globalisation protests.
The Seattle WTO talks fell apart amid street riots and the world free-trade agenda only recovered at negotiations in Doha two years ago where negotiations were kick-started with an emphasis on agriculture.
Economists say that reports of the demise of globalization following Seattle, the burst of the internet bubble and recent cases of US protectionism are exaggerated.
The World Bank's Newfarmer said flows of goods, technology and people via migration and tourism are continuing.
"I think the Cancun ministerial meeting is coming at a point in history that is probably the earlier side of globalization rather than the later side," Newfarmer said.
The WTO reached a deal last month that gives poor countries greater access to medicine in what was seen as one of a few good omens for the Cancun talks.