WTO-CANCUN: Negotiators Step into the Farm Trade Fray

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Diego Cevallos

CANCUN, Mexico, Sep 12 2003 (IPS) - Tensions seem to have got the better of delegates to the WTO Ministerial Conference, with just two days left and little chance at any agreement on agricultural subsidies.

”It looks like there will be no accord on the subsidies issue because the different sides have taken hard positions and nobody is giving up ground. It’s deplorable,” José Augusto Moreno, Nicaragua’s agriculture and forestry minister, told IPS.

The subsidies that rich countries grant their farmers and agricultural exports occupy a central place at the Fifth World Trade Organisation Ministerial Council, which wraps up five days of negotiations on Sunday.

The aim of the 146 trade ministers gathered in this Mexican resort city is to monitor compliance with what is known as the Doha Development Agenda, established in November 2001 at the fourth ministerial conference with the aim of creating a world trade system that benefits poor nations.

In Cancun, what was known as the Group of 20 developing countries – led by Brazil, and including China and India in the fight against agricultural subsidies – has expanded to 21, with the adherence of Egypt, and may be on its way to 22, if Turkey decides to join.

Their argument is that if the WTO wants to achieve what was mandated in Doha, then the European Union, United States and Japan must dismantle their farm subsidy policies.

Tensions have mounted in the negotiations as a result. U.S. deputy trade representative Peter Allgeier went so far as to suggest, ”It is not immediately obvious that they (G-21) are a coherent group.”

Even before Egypt and Turkey considered joining, the Group had established itself as a force to be reckoned with, as its members are home to 51 percent of the global population and 63 percent of the world’s farmers.

After Brazil’s foreign minister Celso Amorim reportedly stormed out of a meeting with U.S. trade officials Thursday night, the Brazilian delegation issued a communiqué Friday stating that as soon as the ministerial meet is over, the most important will be to focus on proposals and try to negotiate, and not waste energy on attacking countries or groups of countries.

While the discussions continue and tensions rise at the official meeting site, among the non-governmental organisations gathered in Cancun for parallel forums, there is a celebratory mood.

”How can we not be pleased if we have been pressing so that there would be no agreement on the agricultural issue, because it would only jeopardise the poor countries,” Alberto Villarreal, director of Friends of the Earth International’s trade campaign, told IPS.

The civil society organisations applaud the fact that the bloc of 21 developing countries was created and is standing up to the industrialised world.

That is one of the few items of good news coming out of the WTO conference, Guatemalan Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchú, said in an IPS interview.

In Villarreal’s opinion, the WTO has shown that it suffers important limitations. ”It will be difficult to complete the Doha Agenda by the end of 2004, the deadline,” says the activist.

Meanwhile, Franz Fischler, the EU’s farm commissioner, noted that the negotiations have entered a new phase, one of ”serious discussions” with the G-21, and with the United States and Africa.

The EU maintains that reducing farm subsidies would be counterproductive to world trade. Fischler says the European bloc is being flexible in the negotiations and that reciprocity is expected from the other parties.

But the EU has been unable to incorporate the so-called Singapore issues – investment, competition rules, government procurement and trade facilitation policies – in the Cancun debate.

The effort against the European initiative came Thursday from 16 developing countries, led by Cuba and Venezuela, who argued that the Singapore issues are not a priority for international trade.

The WTO ministerial meeting ends Sunday, and so far there is little hope that it will produce any important agreements.

”We repeat our opposition to absurd protectionism and to the semantic juggling that seeks to perpetuate subsidies and domestic supports,” said Patricia Ramírez, economy minister of Guatemala, which is a G-21 member.

Ricardo Cabrizas, delegate for Cuba, also of the G-21, commented that the current global scenario ”makes it increasingly difficult to reach consensus in the WTO.”

”The issues of interest to the developing countries, like agricultural trade, have been undermined by the lack of political will, by the delay tactics and frequent intransigence of the principal trade powers, which are backed by their economic superiority,” Cabrizas said.

If the Doha Development Agenda is implemented and if agricultural subsidies were gradually reduced, global well-being would improve at an equivalent of 748 billion dollars, says the WTO in its annual report for 2003.

”It would be a shame if no agreements are reached here in Cancun because the ones who will be hurt most are the poor countries like mine, which need fair trade rules,” said Nicaraguan agricultural minister Moreno.

According to the WTO, trade growth associated with the reduction of farm subsidies – which total a billion dollars a day in the EU and United States combined – would allow the number of people living in poverty to be reduced by no less than 13 percent by 2015.