Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 5 • Number 9 • 13th May 2005
Paris Mini-Ministerial Revives Optimism About WTO Negotiations
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Shortly after WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi warned WTO Members attending a ‘mini-ministerial’ gathering in Paris on 4 May that negotiations to liberalise trade were behind schedule, a breakthrough compromise was reached on agricultural talks at the Paris meeting. The WTO negotiations had been held up for several weeks due to divisions over ‘ad valorem equivalent’ (AVE) conversion, which had stalled agricultural liberalisation talks. AVE conversion sets out a process to change agricultural tariffs charged on a per-unit quantitative basis into tariffs applied as a percentage of the price of the product. The G-10 countries together with the EU had disagreed with agriculture exporters such as the US on how to determine prices for such products, but were able to reach a compromise using two different import price databases. Despite the agriculture breakthrough, participants at the Paris gathering agreed that a great deal remained to be done before July, when Members had hoped to have some draft wording available as ‘first approximations’ of a trade liberalisation deal that Members may then flesh out and adopt at the WTO’s Sixth Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong in December. Increased work, they suggested, was needed in agriculture as well as other areas such as non-agricultural market access for industrial tariff reduction, and services (see BRIDGES Weekly, 11 May 2005).
ICTSD reporting; “WTO ministers reach agreement on tariffs issue,” AFP, 4 May 2005; “Key WTO Members Clinch Deal on Ag Tariff Conversions, Avoiding Setback to Doha Talks,” WTO REPORTER, 5 May 2005; “Progress at last,” THE ECONOMIST, 5 May 2005.
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