Prospects are ”not particularly bright” for progress in trade liberalisation at next month’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial meeting in Mexico, South Africa’s chief negotiator Xavier Carim said on Friday.
The main sticking point in the two-year-old negotiations remained high levels of protection and subsidisation of agriculture in developed countries, he told reporters in Pretoria.
”That… has spilled over into other areas,” he said. ”There is clearly a view among many countries that unless we get some movement in agriculture… there is very little basis to consider all the other issues.”
These included industrial tariffs, investment, competition and trade facilitation — issues mostly of importance to the industrial world.
”Prospects for major movement on agriculture are not particularly bright,” Carim said. ”So we are in something of a logjam.”
The Cancun meeting from September 10 to 14 is to review progress made in global trade talks, which started in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001, and were due to be concluded by the end of next year.
The end of March 2003 was set as the deadline for an agreement on agricultural issues.
”The meeting at Cancun is likely to be very difficult,” Carim said.
If no progress was made on agriculture, ministers may have to consider scaling down the ambitions agreed to at Doha, or change the time-frames for trade negotiations.
The most likely scenario, however, was the creation of more interim deadlines to give impetus to the negotiations in a bid to stay within the 2004 time-frame, Carim said.
Keeping to the deadlines was especially important for developing countries, as they were prejudiced by current WTO agreements which contained inequities and serious shortcomings, he added.
The Doha meeting committed itself to negotiations on agriculture with a view to improving market access, phasing out subsidies and reducing domestic support.
Carim said the United States and Japan particularly held intractable positions on the matter. The European Union too has not moved enough.
He said a joint text issued by the US and the EU last week, containing proposals for advancing the agriculture talks, was in effect nothing but an accommodation of one another.
Also unacceptable to the developing world was a draft agreement issued by the WTO general council this week as a foundation for the September talks. This document tilted the agricultural agenda in favour of the US and EU positions, Carim said.
A group of 20 WTO member countries (G20), including South Africa, China, India and Brazil, put forward a counter-proposal, which was ”much more ambitious”, he said. It carried the support of most African countries.
It was hoped this proposal would be included in or attached to the general council’s draft agreement.
Those ministers supporting the G20 text would refuse to negotiate solely on the basis of the existing draft text, Carim said.
Another issue holding up the trade talks was allowing poor countries to import cheaper generic copies of patented medicines for the treatment of diseases like Aids, malaria and tuberculosis.
Carim was optimistic that negotiations on the matter would be successfully concluded in Geneva by the end of the day. But, the French news agency AFP reported that no agreement was reached.
The US initially blocked such a deal, citing concerns that cheap medicines would find their way into markets they were not intended for.
The 146-member WTO reportedly reached a compromise agreement late on Thursday, but failed to win overall backing in the general council. ‒ Sapa