The Hong Kong government, the host of the Sixth Ministerial Conference (MC6) of the World Trade Organization (WTO), hopes to make the first draft of the manifesto of the conference by July this year.

John Tsang, the government's Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology, said here in a media workshop that the conference is an important milestone in the course of the multilateral trade negotiations mandated by the Doha Development Agenda (DDA).

Tsang said that he hopes this conference can make a substantive outcome helping to bring the DDA negotiations to an early and successful conclusion by 2006.

He said that the process of making such manifesto is not easy, the coming three months will be a very important time for them to make the first draft.

The MC6 will be held in Hong Kong from Dec. 13 to 18, 2005. According to Tsang, WTO members have now generally agreed to aim at delivering results in at least five areas at the MC6, namely modalities for agriculture and for market access for non- agricultural products, critical mass in market access in services, significant progress in rules negotiations including trade facilitation, and appropriate evaluation for the development dimension.

Source: Xinhua