By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Oct 13 2005 (IPS)

In the state of immobility that has been holding up the Doha Round of multilateral trade talks for nearly four years, any tiny vibration like the one felt in this week’s negotiations in the WTO is interpreted as a sign of movement, said a Latin American delegate.

Indeed, many of the representatives of the 148 WTO (World Trade Organisation) member states, some civil society organisations, and independent experts share the view that the talks on trade liberalisation that got underway in the Qatari capital in December 2001 are finally moving forward again.

But WTO Director General Pascal Lamy avoided any show of enthusiasm because although he described this week’s outcome as ”good and positive,” he warned that it provided no guarantee that the talks would continue to move ahead with ”the right approach.”

The unusual climate of excitement felt in WTO headquarters was attributed to the presentation of negotiating proposals on the thorny issue of agriculture, by the United States, the European Union and the Group of 20 developing countries.

But in a wakeup call, the international relief and development agency Oxfam noted that ”the positions of major players are still far apart and the needs of poor countries are being largely ignored.”

Lamy underlined the importance of the U.S. proposal, the first to be tabled, which set off a week of debates last Monday. Washington’s initiative focuses on domestic supports, which are subsidies and other programmes, including those that raise or guarantee prices for farm products and farmers’ incomes.

The WTO director general said that with this proposal, ”The U.S. has decided to cross the line of agriculture reform”.

“Two of these pillars (of agriculture), export support and domestic support, are now in negotiating shape,” he added.

But with respect to a third pillar, market access – which refers to farm import tariffs – he said the positions “are still too far apart in my view for real negotiations to commence.”

Besides the U.S. initiative on agriculture, the EU presented its own global proposal encompassing all of the Doha Round issues, including services, industrial tariffs and intellectual property.

But the outstanding feature of this week’s talks was the appearance of the G20’s proposals for domestic supports and market access.

The bloc of developing countries accounts for 19.3 percent of global agriculture, according to figures from 2003, although the member countries are home to 69.8 percent of the world’s rural population.

The question of market access in particular demonstrated that the bloc, which is coordinated by ministers from Brazil and India, had reached a position that strikes a balance between the widely varying interests of its members, said the Latin American delegate, who preferred not to be identified.

The G20 groups countries like India, which takes a ”defensive” position on market access, with others like Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, efficient agricultural producers and exporters that take an ”offensive” position.

In Argentina, agriculture represents nearly 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), while the proportion of workers involved in that sector amounts to just over 10 percent of all workers. The proportions in neighbouring Uruguay are similar.

In India, by contrast, slightly over half of the population is dedicated to agriculture, which accounts for 20 percent of GDP. And in China, the proportion of the population involved in agriculture is even greater than in India, while the sector represents just over 15 percent of GDP.

The G20 proposed a reduction of the industrialised world’s import tariffs on agriculture by an average of 54 percent, while developing countries would cut import duties by 36 percent.

The head of the U.S. negotiators, Peter Allgeier, told IPS that his delegation is still analysing the G20 proposal on market access: “It just came out. We want to give it a very careful review. At first stance, there does seem to be a very large disparity in the market access ambitions for developed countries compared to what they (the G20) are putting for developing countries.”

But Oxfam trade expert Celine Charveriat said the EU and U.S. need to demonstrate “genuine reductions in agricultural spending and real improvements in market access for poor countries.”

And although the EU and U.S. offered to cut their “trade distorting agricultural subsidies by 70 and 60 percent respectivelyàthanks to the flexibility of reporting mechanisms at the WTO, neither trading bloc would have to cut overall level of farm spending by very much at all.”

The WTO negotiations will continue next week, with the participation of ministers and other senior officials from a number of countries who will return to Geneva for that purpose. The WTO General Council will be meeting on Oct. 19 and 20.

Lamy said the global body still aimed to reach a draft text for the Dec. 13-18 WTO ministerial conference in Hong Kong by mid-November.

The Hong Kong conference will be a crucial step in the Doha Round of negotiations, which are to be completed by the end of 2006.

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