Last-minute deal breathes new life into trade talks

After six days of marathon bargaining, exhausted trade negotiators reached a last-minute but modest deal yesterday to avert a collapse in global free trade talks and developing countries tasted the power of solidarity.

The 150 WTO members approved the Ministerial Declaration last night against a backdrop of protests by thousands of anti-WTO demonstrators near the convention venue.

The agreement reflected moderate progress on agriculture the most contentious issue of the talks and steps forward in other areas such as services, non-agricultural market access and aid for trade.

The wealthy countries agreed they would eliminate farm export subsidies by 2013, according to the declaration.

Although the date is three years later than the original proposal of 2010, a substantial part of the subsidy cuts will be realized by the end of the first half of the implementation, which, according to Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, refers to 2010.

Peter Mandelson, the European Union trade commissioner who had been under fire for unwilling to set an end date for farm export subsidies until Saturday, called the deal "a genuine advance for the agriculture negotiations and for the development goals of the Doha Round."

On cotton, an issue of wide concern to African nations, the ministers agreed that all forms of export subsidies will be eliminated by developed countries in 2006.

Meanwhile, developed countries will give duty- and quota-free access to cotton exporters from least-developed countries from the commencement of the implementation period.

The revised text also sets April 30, 2006, as a new deadline to work out formulas for cutting farm and industrial tariffs and subsidies - a key step towards forging a sweeping global free trade treaty by the end of next year.

The progress achieved yesterday, according to Deputy US Trade Representative Susan Schwab, laid a platform for successful negotiations in many other areas in the future.

The deal has put the Doha round back on track, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy said at the closing ceremony last night. "We are heading in the right direction now."

Schwab said the US is comfortable with the text in the declaration, but "this is not a finished negotiation," and there will be further discussions in Geneva or other places in the next few months to conclude the Doha negotiations launched in the capital of Qatar in 2001 before the end of next year.

There is a new political energy to speed up the talks, Lamy said. "There is no time to rest."

Zhang Xiangchen, director of WTO Affairs Department of the Ministry of Commerce, said China is pleased to see the meeting achieve positive results, but sticking points remain in future negotiations and need to be addressed with alacrity.

Celso Amorim, representing the G20 group of developing countries, said he would qualify the agreement as "modest, but not insignificant." He told a news conference: "I think it's a fair compromise."

India's Trade Minister Kamal Nath said the deal focuses on various problems faced by developing countries, adding the strategy to forge a grand alliance of 110 developing countries had paid off. "G20 has become a major voice for yes or no," he said.

"The biggest message that we send out of this Hong Kong conference is that developing countries have been able to articulate together in one voice their concerns and developed countries need to look at this change in talks on the future of global trade," he said.

Yet there were plenty of people dissatisfied with the result. The African Cotton Producers Organization, for example, complained that the deal didn't touch on the elimination of trade-distorting domestic subsidies of developed countries.

Source: China Daily