India-Brazil-South Africa call

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The leaders of India, Brazil and South Africa (Ibsa), at a summit meeting at Tshwane in South Africa, have reaffirmed their commitment to carry the Doha Round of trade negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) towards an outcome that is “fair and acceptable to all”.

This commitment came in a joint declaration by the Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh, the President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and the President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, following the second Summit of the India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum held in Tshwane on October 17, 2007.

The three leaders noted that the Doha Round is entering a critical stage, and that these negotiations are now in a genuine multilateral process, with draft modality texts for agriculture and non-agriculture market access (Nama) under consideration. This comes just as the chair of the agriculture negotiations at the WTO has been conducting consultations among some 36 representative delegations on various agriculture issues—export competition, domestic support and market access.

While the chair, Ambassador Crawford Falconer of New Zealand, has claimed a reasonable degree of progress on export competition issues, this does not seem to be the case with domestic support and market access issues. A report in WTO Reporter cited Falconer as saying on October 17 that there has been little new that has emerged from the discussions. Nothing much has emerged on the treatment of sensitive products and subsidies for cotton. The report also quoted Falconer as saying that there was nothing more to say on the issue of trade-distorting farm support, and such decisions would have to be made at the political level.

At a meeting of the General Council on October 9, four developing country groupings—the ACP Group, African Group, Nama-11 and Small and Vulnerable Economies (SVE) Group—stressed that the modalities for Nama have to respect such development principles as lower percentage reductions of tariffs for developing countries and flexibilities that suit the diverse needs of different countries.

While not formally rejecting the draft modalities paper of the Nama negotiations chair, the proposal by these groups has major points of divergence from it—such as in the tariff reduction formula, the flexibilities given to developing countries affected by the formula cuts, and special treatment to categories of developing countries.