World Trade Organisation (WTO) member countries involved in agricultural trade negotiations in Geneva are far from reaching compromise on a number of key issues.
This is according to agriculture department deputy director for international trade, Gunter Muller, who on Tuesday said the ”big debate” at the talks, currently underway in the Swiss city, was whether major or minor reforms were needed.
Briefing members of Parliament’s agriculture and land affairs portfolio committee on the progress of the negotiations, Muller said the WTO’s membership was split, mainly, on the ”level of ambition” for reform.
Other contentious issues included whether to allow special flexibility for developing countries, and what the scope of the negotiations should be.
The last included debate on whether to include non-trade concerns — such as animal welfare; food safety and labelling; and geographical indicators to protect trade names for certain products — within the negotiations.
Major negotiating issues included market access and the level of tariff reductions, special treatment for certain products, safeguard provisions and tariff preferences.
On domestic support measures, or subsidies, the talks were focused mainly on levels of price support structures and non-trade concerns.
Export competition matters, including the elimination or not of export subsidies, time frames, the handling of export credits, and state trading enterprises, also formed part of the major negotiating issues, Muller said.
Some countries wanted the rules for agricultural trade to be drastically changed, while others wanted only minor changes, and yet others wanted to retain the status quo.
South Africa’s objectives in the negotiations were, among other things, to provide for the development of historically disadvantaged farmers, and rural and farming communities; and facilitating a substantial reduction in the high price of distorting subsidies in developed countries.
South Africa also wanted to drastically improve market access in targeted markets for its agricultural products with export potential, and to eliminate all export subsidies, including export credits, as soon as possible.
About 60% of South African agricultural exports already enjoyed tariff preferences, and export subsidies did not exist in the country, he said.
The agricultural negotiations form part of the broader WTO Round launched in Doha, Qatar in November 2001.
Muller said according to the schedule for negotiations set in Doha, agreement should have been reached on the formula for tariff reductions, the size of reductions in domestic support, and the time frames for eliminating export subsidies by the end of March this year.
However, this deadline had now been missed, and it was questionable whether WTO members would be ready to table their draft schedules (detailed negotiation offers) for the Fifth Ministerial Meeting in Mexico in September this year.
The negotiations were set to end by January 1, 2005, but when this would actually happen was now ”anybody’s guess”, Muller said. – Sapa