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TRADE-AGRICULTURE: No Reason to Panic Yet, Says Negotiator

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jun 25 2004 (IPS) - The results of this week’s talks on the liberalisation of trade in agriculture in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) were so insubstantial that Mexican Ambassador Eduardo Pérez Motta felt the need to urge officials from his country not to ”fall into panic”.

Each time a deadline approaches in the global talks on trade, the environment becomes more polarised, and many say they see setbacks rather than the hoped-for progress, Pérez Motta told IPS.

In the process of agricultural negotiations, the 147 WTO members have a little over a month to agree on a common framework for moving ahead in the final phase of the Doha Round of talks, launched in 2001 at the fourth WTO ministerial conference, which also entails questions like services, industrial tariffs and intellectual property.

A week ago, hopeful signs emerged when representatives of the G5 or ”group of five” key parties involved in the agriculture talks – the United States, European Union, Brazil, India and Australia – met in Sao Paulo, Brazil parallel to the XI United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD XI).

Brazil and India, along with China and other developing countries from Latin America, Africa and Asia, form part of the Group of 20 (G20), which advocates the elimination of factors that distort global trade in agriculture like subsidies and barriers to imports.

Australia, meanwhile, represents the Cairns Group of agricultural exporters, created in the 1980s to fight subsidies and agricultural protectionism.

The United States and EU, besides applying barriers to trade to protect their farmers, account for most of the subsidies, which total one billion dollars a day and drive down international commodity prices.

But when the negotiators who met in Sao Paulo returned to Geneva, where the WTO is based, the climate became tense once again.

For the first time, criticism was heard of certain aspects of the talks taking place in the limited context of the G5, with some countries demanding greater transparency and complaining that the documents containing proposals have only been circulated among a limited group of nations.

Protests over the lack of transparency and demands to be included in the negotiations came from diplomats from Oman, which represents member states that have recently joined the WTO, and from Switzerland, in the name of the Group of 10 (G10), also made up of Bulgaria, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Mauritius, Norway, South Korea and Taiwan.

The head of Costa Rica’s negotiators, Ronald Saborio, said some countries had demanded a return to multilateralism, in what was interpreted as a criticism of the concentration of the talks within the G5.

Mexico, a member of the G20, clarified that it felt well-represented by Brazil and India among the five negotiators discussing the framework agreement. But Pérez Motta added that if any of the parties ”has a proposal, they should share it with everyone.”

The chair of the agriculture committee’s special negotiating session, New Zealand Ambassador Tim Groser, said it is impossible to work immediately with total transparency, or to disseminate all of the documents instantaneously.

Groser and other negotiators believe the G5 should tone down and filter the differences.

The discrepancies emerged with the presentation of a proposal drafted by the United States that was not introduced formally, but as a ”non-paper”, the name given to initiatives that are initially designed for exploratory purposes.

The U.S. proposal, reported by the press in the United States, focuses on the question of market access, which encompasses tariffs and quotas that block imports of farm products, mainly by industrialised countries.

Market access, export subsidies and domestic supports or subsidies are the three main focuses of the agricultural talks, although the former is the most controversial.

The U.S. initiative argues in favour of the so-called ”Swiss formula”, which would greatly narrow the gap between high and low tariffs, while setting a maximum tariff.

But the developing countries prefer other alternatives, like the creation of bands for phasing out tariffs, with the aim of protecting special products or ensuring supplies of certain foodstuffs.

By the end of the week of closed-door negotiations, Groser said that not enough progress had been made to draft a document summing up the different positions.

The New Zealand ambassador will likely present a summary when the trade negotiations committee, which supervises the Doha Round, meets next week.

The next meeting of the agriculture committee is scheduled for Jul. 14. By the deadline, two weeks later, an agreement is to be reached that would enable the talks to be relaunched, and completed by the end of the year, as established by the timeframe set by the WTO.

Pérez Motta predicted that the main agricultural nations will refuse to budge in their positions until the last moment, but added that it is still possible to reach an agreement by late July.