No consensus on how to take forward agriculture work

Negotiations on agricultural and industrial goods trade have been held up as the fallout from the trade-facilitation impasse at the WTO continues. Kanaga Raja reports, in the following two articles, on the deadlock in the latest round of talks in these two negotiating areas.

GENEVA: The Chair of the Special Session of the WTO Agriculture Committee, at the conclusion of an informal open-ended meeting on 23 September, said that there was no consensus among the members on how to take the work in the Committee forward.

According to trade officials, there were continued differences among members on how to proceed with the work on agriculture under the Bali decisions and in the Doha Round negotiations.

In his concluding remarks at the meeting, the Chair, Ambassador John Adank of New Zealand, said: “Taking all of these views into account, my general conclusion as of now, is that in the absence of a solution to the current impasse, there is no consensus on how work can be taken forward in this Committee.”

In his opening statement at the meeting, Ambassador Adank had said that the meeting provided a further opportunity to the members to take stock of their positions concerning the way ahead for the negotiations and the work programme mandated at Bali.

He then proceeded to provide a short report of where members stood just before the summer break as well as developments since then.

Noting that the Special Session did not exist in isolation from the broader work on Doha and Bali follow-up, the Chair said that at the end of July, members failed to meet the deadline set by ministers in Bali for the protocol on the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA).

It would appear from reactions both in the lead-up to and since July that this had a broader impact on work within this and other bodies tasked with Bali and Doha follow-up, he added.

The Chair recalled that in a message on 2 September, WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo highlighted the need to re-engage quickly to discuss the situation with a view to finding solutions to the implementation of the Bali outcomes.

The D-G had called on the relevant Chairpersons to immediately begin consulting with members on those issues so that he could report on the outcome of these consultations at a Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) meeting latest in early October.

“So that is what I have been doing now as well as in bilateral meetings with a range of delegations who were able to meet with me in recent days,” said Ambassador Adank.

A meeting of the WTO General Council that was held on 25 July to discuss the TFA was suspended on account of a lack of consensus on the protocol of amendment that, if adopted, would have brought the TFA into legal effect.

At that meeting, India had made a strong statement wherein it had said that the TFA must be implemented only as part of a single undertaking including the permanent solution on food security. India had received support from Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela, who said that they would have difficulty joining a consensus on the TFA protocol while no progress had been made on the areas of interest to developing countries.

Just a couple of hours or so before the 31 July midnight deadline for the adoption of the protocol, an informal TNC meeting was held at which the WTO D-G reported that “there is no workable solution on the table” at present and that he did not have any indication that one would be forthcoming.

As a result, the General Council meeting suspended on 25 July was formally closed without a protocol being adopted.

Objections

According to trade officials, at the 23 September Agriculture Committee Special Session, some 18 countries including Australia, Japan, Paraguay, the European Union, Canada, the United States and Hong Kong-China voiced objections to the holding up of the trade facilitation text despite agreement at Bali for its adoption by 31 July.

Some reiterated the view that this amounted to a betrayal of trust and had made it impossible to engage in further work in good faith, particularly as the negotiations on trade facilitation had concluded in Bali and what was left was the technical task of cleaning up the text by July.

Some called for the text to be adopted within the next few days, while others called for countries to stick to their commitments with regard to all the Bali decisions, including the deadlines that they contain.

Trade officials said that some other countries called for the impasse to be resolved quickly. Some including the G33 grouping, the Philippines, China and El Salvador said that a work programme to conclude the Doha Round should be agreed by the end of the year.

According to trade officials, India reiterated its position that adoption of the trade facilitation text should be delayed until the end of the year, with a permanent solution on public stockholding for food security purposes to be also agreed by then.

India referred to a statement that it had made at a meeting of heads of delegation (HOD) on 15 September.

(At that informal HOD meeting, according to those present, India’s Ambassador to the WTO Anjali Prasad had reiterated India’s remarks at the General Council on 25 July, namely that there must be a postponement of the adoption of the TFA protocol until a permanent solution is found on the issue of public stockholding for food security purposes.

(India told the HOD, amongst others, that it was looking for an accelerated process as well as a dedicated mechanism to discuss and develop the permanent solution on food security and to conclude this by the end of the year, adding that there were already some G33 proposals on the table, including one that was tabled in July.)

At the informal agriculture meeting on 23 September, trade officials said, India countered the charge of bad faith, saying that its accusers were also showing bad faith by rejecting the December 2008 draft deal in agriculture, which was the one currently on the table and was in turn based on the 2004 framework agreement.

According to trade officials, the least developed countries (represented by Uganda) said that the provisions in the Bali decisions for the LDCs should not be held up by the impasse. The LDCs also called for the work programme to be completed by the end of the year.

The G33 drew attention to its proposals on public stockholding, special products and the special safeguard mechanism.

According to trade officials, Argentina stressed that eliminating all forms of export subsidies was becoming more urgent since agricultural prices were falling and pressure to subsidize was increasing. (SUNS7881)                          

Third World Economics, Issue No. 577, 16-30 Sept 2014, pp9-10