| WTO July package: a pared down agenda still full of controversy
Sophia Murphy
19 July 2004 As proof of its status as the cornerstone of the new trade round under negotiation at the World Trade Organization (WTO), agriculture is the most detailed section in the so-called framework for talks released for comment to governments in Geneva last Friday. The framework is an attempt to salvage the failure of Trade Ministers to reach agreement in Cancún last September. Although pared down — investment, competition and government procurement have been dropped — the framework is still likely to pose problems for many countries. The framework reflects a great deal of hard negotiating and delicate compromise. Nonetheless, developing country concerns are once again handled inadequately. Despite the framework’s stated intention to build on the Doha mandate, the framework does not do justice to issues of core concern to developing countries, particularly implementation, where a great many words are expended but nothing concrete is promised. Developing countries agreed to the Doha Agenda in part because they were promised progress on a number of implementation issues, with clear deadlines. In the end, not one of those deadlines was respected. Now the proposed framework does not even offer dates, just restates how important the issues are. Why should developing countries sign up for a new round of agreements when the system is unable to solve their problems with existing agreements? On agriculture, there are a number of problems. First, the so-called Blue Box, which provides an exemption from spending limits for payments to farmers that are tied to production limiting objectives, is expanded to include programmes that have no such production-limiting function. If the new criteria included "counter-cyclical payments" to compensate for low prices offered to farmers by processing and trading firms, the unfair trade practice of agricultural export dumping will continue undisciplined. Then the draft text on agriculture says clearly that developed and developing countries face quite different concerns when it comes to handling “sensitive” products (products that have been or perhaps ought to be marked out for market protection). Yet the clearest way this difference is marked is in its provision of parameters for developed countries’ sensitive
products, while leaving the objectives for developing countries’ special products for later consideration. There is a real fear this will leave developing countries negotiating for the inclusion of meaningful treatment of this concept at a later stage, while sensitive products for developed countries are safely locked in. Furthermore, IATP is concerned by the call for "coherence... concerning the matter of Special Products, the conditions for the Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) and the selection and treatment of sensitive products". If "coherence" entails a "parallel" treatment of Special Products designated by developing countries for food security and rural development purposes with that of products designated by developed countries as "sensitive”, then developing countries will be greatly limited in their ability to use Special Products and the SSM to contribute to the their development. Though the Draft Council Decision takes into account “the Ministerial Statement adopted at Cancún on 14 September 2003”, the Framework ignores the discussion of commodities issues and the joint proposal of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania on addressing the declining terms of trade for primary commodities. WTO Members must take note of this joint proposal and revise the Framework, per paragraph 28 of the Ministerial Statement, to instruct the Committee on Trade and Development to work on commodities issues “with other relevant international organizations”. The General Council should also request the WTO Secretariat to cooperate with the work of the International Task Force on Commodities to be established by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development following its Ministerial Conference in Sao Paolo in June. The current draft for the General Council Meeting end of July can be downloaded under: http://www.tradeobservatory.org/library.cfm?refid=36540
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