The Sixth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) issued a Hong Kong Declaration Sunday. Unlike the obvious progress in the elimination of agricultural export subsidies, little headway is seen in the negotiations on trade in services.

Some developing countries feel that there is little development in the text of the declaration as their major divergency with the developed members remains unsolved.

The negotiators already set up modalities for the negotiations in 2001, which preserve and extend the flexibilities in the WTO's services agreement that allows developing countries to commit to liberalize in the only sectors they choose.

However, developed countries, in particular the European Union, have proposed to introduce many new negotiating methods that some experts said will undermine this kind of flexibilities.

They proposed that a multilateral system be introduced, in which developing members must honor their free trade promise in a certain number of sectors of the services, removing their present freedom.

If the EU's proposals go through, the developing members will lose control of their services sectors, which include finance, distribution, telecommunications, energy, retail, and professional services.

In response, the developing countries have been fighting against the proposals which they see as an encroachment on their rights in the present WTO services regime and also a threat to their domestic services firms.

Despite the irreconcilable conflicts, there are also some agreement which were reached by the negotiators in Hong Kong.

All members agreed that negotiations on trade in services should proceed to their conclusion so that it can be applied to promote the economic growth of all members, especially the developing and least-developed countries.

The declaration urged all members to participate actively in the negotiations for achieving a higher level of liberalization of trade in services

Besides, The negotiators reaffirmed the position on giving special treatment to the least-developed countries, which was actually agreed on in the negotiations on Sept. 3, 2003.

Source: Xinhua