TWN Info Service on WTO and Trade Issues (Dec05/23)

Review of Day 4 of Ministerial

NO LIGHT AT END OF HK TUNNEL, BUT A NEW SOUTH ALLIANCE IS BORN

By Martin Khor, Hong Kong, 16 December 2005

At the end of the fourth day of the WTO Ministerial Conference, there has hardly been agreement reached on the key issues, and time is almost running out on attempts to get any “value added” out of the meeting.

A revised Ministerial Declaration is due out Saturday “mid-day”.  The facilitators of the various issues (agriculture, NAMA, services, development issues, etc) have been given a deadline of 6.00 a.m. Saturday to submit inputs to the conference chairman.

Despite a series of Green Room meetings that meet every night, sometimes to 3 a.m., there has been no agreement on any significant issue as of Friday late night. 

According to sources, early on Saturday morning, Brazil’s Foreign Minister Celso Amorim decided to leave the Green Room early because he was so frustrated by the lack of progress in agriculture. When one important developed country Trade Minister said he had no mandate to improve his offer, which is generally considered inadequate, Amorim was reported to have responded what then are we doing here, we are just wasting our time.   He then left, in a gesture of frustration.  “This situation does not look good,” said one trade official at 3 a.m. Saturday morning.  

At a heads-of-delegation (HOD) meeting, it was reported to delegates that the previous days’ work on agriculture had been largely on export competition.  While many members wanted to name an end-date to export subsidies in all its forms, some brought up the need to link this to resolving how to treat the indirect subsidies first.

They were also told that there are significant gaps in agriculture and NAMA.  Though  “there is no breakthrough, there is also no breakdown.”   On the LDC issue, (how to secure duty and quota free market access for LDC products), the discussion is constructive but more work needs to be done, the delegates were told.

The Kenyan Trade Minister, Mr. Mukhisa Kituyi, urged groups to narrow their differences. On cotton, preference erosion, end-date of export subsidies and attainment of “parallelism”, there has been no progress.   Significant differences exist on how to address the preference erosion problem.

On NAMA, there was no progress to report.  On development-specific issues, the facilitator, Guyana Minister Clement Rohee, said there had been some progress. On  Wednesday night, some language had been issued to try to bridge the differences on the LDC market access issue, which was being considered.

The facilitator for services, Korean Minister Hyung Chong Kim, was not present to present his report. It could be because the services meeting he was chairing was still going on.

It was a rather stormy meeting, as a large number of developing countries who have problems with the services text (paragraph 21 in the main text and Annex C) became visibly upset with what they felt as a marginalization of their views and concerns.

The manner in which the draft text on services was brought to Hong Kong, and how the services meetings have been conducted, was a stark reminder of the untransparent and unsavory ways in which drafting and decision-making were done in previous Ministerials, such as in Seattle, Doha and Cancun.

The services situation has reached crisis point, with many developing-country delegations quite outraged at how the contested and unpopular Annex C  retains its position, despite repeated formal and informal appeals to have key aspects amended. How this crisis is handled could well determine the fate of the Ministerial.  (See separate story on services).

On a day when there was no positive news on the negotiations, the political highlight was an unprecedented press conference jointly held by the leaders and members of leadng developing country groupings operating in the WTO -- the G20, G33, ACP, LDCs, Africa Group, and the Small Economies.

In a large theatre room packed full of people, the coordinators of these groups proclaimed to the public their new concrete attempt at unity, with the aim of harmonizing the position of the developing world in WTO negotiations.