The World Trade Organization's (WTO) 150 members yesterday struck a deal to keep alive its hopes of concluding a sweeping free trade treaty in 2006.

The following is a summary of key elements:

Agriculture:

Rich nation export subsidies, including those contained in US food aid programs, any subsidies involved in the activities of monopolistic trading companies in Australia, New Zealand and Canada as well as those of the European Union will be eliminated "progressively" by 2013.

Disciplines on export credits, export credit guarantees or insurance programs, state trading enterprises and food aid will be agreed by April 30, 2006.

For cotton, export subsidies will be eliminated by developed countries in 2006. Trade-distorting domestic subsidies should be reduced "more ambitiously" than under any general formula for subsidy cuts, and over a shorter period of time.

Services

The United States and the European Union successfully resisted attempts by some developing countries to weaken the wording of the draft text negotiated at the WTO headquarters in Geneva.

Developing countries feared it could force them to open sectors they want to protect. EU and US companies were worried the services talks, already badly behind schedule, could slip further if the text were weakened.

Manufacturing

A so-called "Swiss" formula will be used to ensure that the highest tariffs fall most. But the accord said nothing about the number of coefficients to be used.

Development

Least-developed countries (LDCs) will be guaranteed duty-free, quota-free access for 97 per cent of their exports from 2008, or from no later than the coming into effect of any final trade treaty. Developed countries also undertook to ensure that so-called "rules of origin" are "transparent and simple."

Source: China Daily