Recognizing that little progress can be expected on intractable issues like farm subsidies, officials at global trade talks scheduled to begin in Hong Kong Tuesday now appear likely to focus heavily on increasing exports from the worlds poorest countries, the World Bank press review reports Monday.
Pascal Lamy, Director General of the World Trade Organization, and John Tsang, Hong Kongs trade minister and chairman of the WTO ministerial conference in Hong Kong, have called with increasing emphasis in the last few days for a detailed agreement eliminating all duties and quotas on the exports of at least 32 of the worlds poor countries.
The move to focus on trade by the poor is drawing support from the European Union and Japan, as well as from some of the more economically viable developing nations. It comes as efforts for a deal on agricultural subsidies have stumbled.
Trade powers on Monday promised steps to help poorest nations sell more goods while Europe came under renewed pressure to give ground over farm tariff barriers on the eve of a key World Trade Organization (WTO) conference.
Although the WTO shelved plans for a draft free trade deal at the six-day conference, US Trade Representative Rob Portman made clear that he had “come to work” and was looking for progress in contentious areas of the negotiations.
With continuing deep differences between developed and developing countries – particularly over agriculture – forcing the WTO to drop the bar for the Hong Kong meeting, measures for poor states, including duty-free access, have become a litmus test for success at the WTOs 6th ministerial conference.
– I think it would earth these negotiations in the real world, European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said adding: – It would give them (the talks) a human face.”
But while the United States and Brazil, two other leading participants in the 149-state conference echoed Mandelsons call, they kept up pressure on the EU over farm reform.
The EUs refusal to offer more than an average 39 percent cut in tariff barriers has been blamed by many farm goods exporters, most notably Brazil and the United States, for a stalemate in agricultural talks, the lynchpin of the WTOs Doha trade round.
The reason why leading trade powers are scrambling to assemble a package of trade and aid measures for the World Trade Organisations poorest members, is that they want to avoid any repeat of the mass walkout that shut down the last ministerial meeting in Cancun two years ago.
The US, the European Union and Japan all regard early agreement on a combination of cash and unrestricted access for poor countries exports as essential to clear the way for negotiations at the WTO meeting on how to break the deadlock in the Doha trade round.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
