WTO splits talks for clinching deal soon

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As the ministers gathered here failed to make any major headway in the global trade deal talks, the World Trade Organisation director general Pascal Lamy disbanded the meeting and asked the countries to hold talks in smaller groups to help in bringing out a July 2008 package by this weekend, which would then be a stepping stone to conclude the Doha Round by the end of 2008.

Asking members not to let this chance slip away, Lamy has asked ministers of seven important countries, both from the developed and the developing world including India, Brazil, China, the European Union, US, Japan and Australia to help in giving final shape to the texts on agriculture and industrial goods. The ministerial level talks will now resume on Thursday.

Lamy, meanwhile, has appointed Norwegian foreign minister Jonas Gahr Store to help him by holding informal contacts with delegations on the very important TRIPS (Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) and the related issue of Geographical Indication and the relationship between the WTO TRIPS agreement and the convention on biodiversity.

Minister Store will be reporting on the consultation to the Trade Negotiations Committee.

The urgent objective of breaking the ministers talks was to come to a consensus on “modalities” in agriculture and non-agricultural market access (NAMA or industrial goods). The modalities include the formulas and other methods that will be used mainly to determine the scale of reductions in duties on several industrial and agricultural goods as well as future levels of agriculture subsidies in the WTOs member countries. Besides, there are groups of other countries looking into issues including services and rules.

The ministers on Tuesday ran through the agriculture and NAMA text last night and focused on agricultural subsidies as well as farm and industrial goods market access.

The director generals spokesman Keith Rockwell quoted Lamy as saying the progress so far has been modest and it was clear that the members should get into a more intensive mode of consultations including smaller configuration.

“Success or failure depends very much on how far all are prepare to cooperate with each other on the fundamentally important issues and whether we are each prepared to act in the interests of the broader membership” he said.

Indicating that negotiations could well be stretched into the weekend, he said “exactly how long, I dont know. (Negotiation) texts (on agriculture and industrial goods) were due to be issued on Friday. But I will not advice you to hold your breath on Friday for those texts.”

He said there are members who have problems with a lot of elements in both of the texts as well as in other areas. The Doha Round talks, launched in 2001, have already failed to meet several earlier deadlines due to major differences between the developed and developing world on commitments towards liberalization of global trade. According to WTO, a global trade liberalization deal could add around $100 billion dollars annually to the world economy.

He quoted Lamy as saying that though members welcomed the new US offer to reduce its overall trade distorting farm subsidies, several members urged the US to consider further reductions.

On amber box (subsidies not permitted by the WTO), members focused on two main issues—the base period for product specific cuts and whether the US should be given headroom for starting point of those cuts. The US indicated it could accept the base period proposed in the draft modalities text.

On agriculture tariff cuts, the focus and the emphasis was on cuts in top band, that is tariffs in the highest category of above 75% and where the range is 66% to 73%.