Brussels, 25/11/2013 (Agence Europe) - If the multilateral system is to be spared a resounding failure, the ministers from the member countries will have to finalise an agreement on trade facilitation themselves.
After three months of intensive work, diplomats from the 159 WTO member countries have not managed to finalise a draft mini-agreement on the Doha Round before the meeting of their trade ministers for the ninth WTO conference in Bali on 3-6 December.
Discussions within the WTO were broken off at dawn on Monday 25 November. On Tuesday 26 November, WTO head, Roberto Azevedo from Brazil, was due to report to the WTO General Council on the results of the preparatory work for the conference. This had initially been planned for 21 November. The issues are still up in the air but the partial agreement texts can still be finalised by the ministers in Bali.
The core point of this partial agreement, which will be complemented by a working programme to implement from 2014, is an agreement on trade facilitation, which largely depends on the easing of customs procedures in order to facilitate trade flows. To this agreement some member states have linked an agreement on matters relating to special and differentiated treatment for developing countries, to the needs of least developed countries (LDC) and to certain agricultural aspects - public stocks and domestic food aid, export competition, and the management of import tariff quotas.
With regard to trade facilitation, the member countries still have differences of opinion on the implementation of a customs cooperation agreement, the commitments to take and the transition periods. In Bali, the ministers will have to respond in particular to Cuba's concerns on the American embargo, to Turkey's concerns on the possible impact of new rules on transit, and to the concerns of some Central American countries that are resisting calls to remove customs intermediaries.
Progress towards a trade facilitation agreement, however, was helped by advances being made on three agricultural questions, even though details still need to be sorted out, particularly with regard to the demand made by G33 developing countries, headed by India, to obtain special treatment that allows them to make their rules more flexible on domestic support on public storage and internal food aid. They hope to be able to create stocks of essential products in an effort to manage possible food crises in their countries. Up until now, the WTO has prohibited this because of the possible negative impact it could have on trade. The delegations were able to reach a compromise on the peace clause limited to a four-year period, during which the other countries would abstain from filing a complaint at the WTO against the country that has implemented this provision, subject to certain conditions. Pakistan is still opposed to the project because it is afraid that its neighbour, India, would export products that it had been storing, onto its market.
Headed by Brazil, the emerging economies from the G20, obtained an agreement in principle on a non-binding political declaration on the partial application of the agreement concluded in 2005 in Hong Kong on export competition and the simultaneous eradication of all kinds of export subsidies (export loans, food aid and commercial state enterprises).
The third area of progress made in the agricultural field relates to another demand from G20 countries involving export quota management that allows countries to export a certain tonnage of merchandise to a third country duty-free. The problem results from the introduction of superfluous administrative charges imposed by import countries that prevent exporters benefiting from this quota to the full.
On the chapter on the development and requirements of LDCs (including cotton), there was a palpable convergence of views between member states on the control mechanism for revising the way the provisions on special and differentiated treatment functions. (EH/transl.fl)