Commerce ministers belonging to various WTO negotiating alliances, meeting in Geneva on June 11, 2007, have informed developed countries that they will not accept any dilution of issues concerning food and livelihood security, and agreed to reject unreasonable demands for market access.

A consensus emerged among the various groupings, which included the G20, G33 and NAMA-11, that no compromises would be made by the majority of WTO members “to satisfy their (rich countries) demand of additional market access”.
 
An Indian commerce ministry release said that Commerce Minister Kamal Nath told the G33 meeting that special products and the special safeguard mechanism were critically important for India and others in the group. “The issue will not be allowed to be diluted in any way,” he said.

In the G20, India called for the EU and US to cut their agricultural subsidies substantially if any further movement in trade talks was to take place. G20 members said they had already made ambitious offers by agreeing to the principle of a two-third overall proportional tariff cut.

The US offered to cap agricultural subsidies at US$ 22 billion annually (€ 16.5 billion) in October 2005, but the G20 wants to see that halved. The US says it first wants better offers from the European Union and developing countries on agricultural and manufacturing market access.

Pakistan’s Minister of Commerce Humayun Akhtar Khan said that while addressing issues of market access, the focus should be on the fullest liberalisation of tropical products besides addressing tariff escalation and tariff capping. The issue of cotton was important for Pakistan and it fully supported the position of the Cotton-4 (C4) African countries.

Khan shared the general perception that the Doha Round is entering its final phase. At this stage, he said, one has to be careful about the balance between flexibility and ambition. While developing countries would have to show flexibility, they should not compromise on ambition.

NAMA-11, which includes India, Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan and China, rejected the developed countries’ proposal of a Swiss coefficient of 15 for developing countries, according to the Indian commerce ministry release.

NAMA-11 members felt it was “inappropriate for the developed countries to place such extreme demands on the developing countries; in effect asking them to pay for the entire Round.”

June 13, 2007