Brussels, 07/02/2002 (Agence Europe) - Regarding agriculture, must the "development" dimension of the Doha Agenda take the form of exemptions to the rules subscribed to by developed countries or by flexibility in implementing common commitments to liberalisation that will be taken in 2005? The debate around this crucial issue began in Geneva earlier this week, where the 144 met in view of closing, by Friday, the work on paving the way for the launch on the new Round of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
Talks that pursued informally over the first three days of a special session on agricultural negotiations, rapidly revolved around two different approaches to the special treatment promised to developing countries on each of the chapters of the Doha Agenda, including this one, still as sensitive and doubtless defining for the whole of the reform process of the trading system. Like Pakistan, Nigeria, Cuba and Zimbabwe, most developing countries of Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, propose creating a "development box", that would procure them exemptions, or even the right to increase their customs tariffs for certain products, while integrating a commitment by developing countries to grant them better market access, and a second commitment, now binding, to provide them with technical assistance. These countries point out that to develop their exports potential, they need to retain or erect protections against the implacable competition of food produced and exported with the help of subsidies by developed countries on the world market, as their treasuries do not enable them to provide comparable support for their agriculture. Other developing countries, essentially in Asia and Latin America, for their part, share the view defended by their Cairns partners and the United States … as well as by the Union. This group, that brings together the main agricultural powers more accustomed to confrontation than agreement on this ground of rivalry, is opposed, on a same tone, not to the concept of a development box, but to what, they say, would become "a blank cheque" on the contents of this "box". And the benefit engendered by such a treatment leaves them sceptical.
"The commercial gains come from imports and exports" and "cannot be measured simply in terms of additional exports" stressed the Union's representative in Geneva, David Roberts, warning the "beneficiaries" against a likely counter blow. He also advises developing countries against allowing themselves to be tempted by the idea of a hike in tariffs, for fear "of reducing to nothing the great trade potential that exists between them and "reducing the benefits that all may gain" from trade. Should only developed countries liberalise their markets, which would not fail to push prices - the high level of which today makes them attractive - down, how would developing countries, which would at the same time have maintained or strengthened their own protection, succeed in rivalling Cairns exports on these markets? And what of small insular countries whose outlets are today preferential, how will they compete in the markets of developed countries where prices continue to fall, losing them the edge they now have? Mr. Roberts went on to wonder. "We are convinced", he said, "that we have all to gain in moving towards the long-term objective, which is to forge a fair and market-oriented agricultural trading system", and that a certain amount of flexibility has to come into play in the "timetable to achieve it" and on the level of reductions to consent for domestic support, the idea being "to try to tackle the different problems facing different types of developing countries", beginning with the least advanced amongst them. Remains the fact though that "we should all move in the same direction towards a shared goal", he insisted.
In New York, Mike Moore discusses increase in financial assistance for participation of poorest countries in negotiations
On the fringe of the World Economic Forum, WTO Director General Mike Moore had talks with a dozen or so countries over an initiative aimed at increasing their financial assistance to the participation of the poorest countries in negotiations of the DDA. Officials from the Union, the United States, as well as their counterparts from 13 other countries (including Australia, Japan, India and South Africa), moreover, undertook to further co-operate to make a success of the Ministerial of Mexico. This meeting, that will bring together the 144 at the end of the first half of 2003, is to define the scope and contents of negotiations that will then enter the thick of the subject, on the basis of "initial" proposals that each will have presented by then. Regarding agriculture, the arrangement for the negotiations will in principle already be defined by March of the same year (objectives of reductions to consent, reference years, etc.). When passing through Washington, Dr. Supachai Panichpakdi, who is to succeed Mike Moore in September, considered that the Round's success would depend on the ability of the 144 to come up with a "decent agreement" on agriculture and launch "serious" technical assistance programmes "before we leave for Mexico".