Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 5 • Number 15 • 2nd September 2005

WTO Negotiators Get Ready for Hong Kong Countdown

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Following their failure to meet an end-July target date for reaching agreement on certain key issues in the ongoing Doha Round negotiations, Geneva-based trade diplomats are girding themselves for what promises to be an intensive three months of discussions in the run-up to the WTO’s Hong Kong Ministerial Conference in December. Early this year, Members decided to try to come up with preliminary agreements — ‘first approximations’ — on contentious issues such as agriculture and non-agricultural market access (NAMA) before the WTO’s annual August holiday. These would then have been finalised at Hong Kong. Many negotiators blamed the agriculture talks for their inability to arrive at these ‘first approximations,’ suggesting that several Members were waiting to see progress on farm trade liberalisation before making concessions in other negotiating areas.

In statements during the last meetings before the August break, former WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi drew Members’ attention to specific issues that were preventing agreement in different negotiating areas. He urged them to agree on the structure of the tiered formula for cutting tariffs on farm products, as well as on how to go about reducing trade-distorting domestic subsidies. Echoing the recommendations of the chairs of the respective negotiating groups, Supachai asked Members to examine how to promote deeper liberalization in services trade, and to strike an “acceptable balance between ambition and flexibility” on NAMA. He also called on them to make progress on special and differential treatment (S&D) for developing countries — the development dimension of the negotiations in general was described as “sadly lacking” by one ambassador at the 28 July session of the Trade Negotiations Committee.

Delegates return to find a new Director-General — Pascal Lamy took over from Supachai on 1 September. His foremost task in the coming months will be to revive the faltering Doha Round.

For more details, please see BRIDGES Weekly, 3 August 2005.

ICTSD reporting.