Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 10 • Number 36 • 1st November 2006
Agriculture: Lack Of Transparency Attributed To Late WTO Notifications
Extensive delays in Members’ notifications of their farm subsidies and tariffs are undermining the WTO’s ability to promote transparency and are creating obstacles to progress in the negotiations themselves, according to Christian Häberli (Switzerland), Chair of the WTO Committee on Agriculture (CoA).
While the Doha round negotiating meetings remain suspended due largely to Members’ differences over agriculture (see BRIDGES Weekly, 2 August 2006), regular committee meetings are continuing.
At a meeting on 31 October, a number of countries, including Australia and Brazil, voiced support for the views of the Chair, calling on Members to submit their notifications of agricultural subsidies and tariffs. Documents circulated by the WTO showed significant delays in notifications, with 70 Members (almost half of the WTO membership) failing to provide some or all of the required information for the 1995-2000 period. Heavy subsidisers such as the EU and the US have not submitted domestic support notifications since 2001, and Japan has not done so since 2002. Other major players in the negotiations, such as Argentina, Canada, Korea, Norway and Switzerland, are just as far behind.
It was noted that the absence of accurate, comparable and up-to-date information exacerbated existing inequalities between Members, and presented particular problems for smaller developing country delegations in the negotiations. Brazil, which had managed to notify despite being a developing country, noted that developed countries should be in a position to do so as well. Chair Häberli also suggested that governments should use staff members that have been ‘freed up’ by the suspension of the negotiations to try to rectify the backlog in notifications.
The EU said that it would soon submit domestic support notifications for 2002 and 2003. The delay was a result of the addition of ten new member states, which had meant that the calculations had had to be adjusted, the EU said.
EU enlargement, export subsidies prompt questions
Supported by the US and Canada, Australia raised questions about how the EU’s export subsidy commitments would be adapted following its enlargement to 25 members. It noted that the EU had not tabled the draft ’schedules of commitments,’ which Australia said still had to be negotiated and agreed with Members following the expansion. The EU was also asked how it intended to handle the planned inclusion of Bulgaria and Romania in the next expansion phase.
The EU stated that, although its subsidised wheat exports were expected to increase, these would remain below the bound level. When the EU renewed its use of export subsidies for wheat during the Doha Round, some Members saw this as a sign of bad faith (see BRIDGES Weekly, 16 February 2005).
Liberalisation versus ’sensitive’ and ’special’ products
At the same meeting, the World Bank warned that too much flexibility through ’sensitive products’ (products both developed and developing countries would be able to designate for relatively lower rates of tariff reduction) and ’special products’ (set for lenient tariff treatment on the basis of food security, livelihood security, and rural development concerns in developing countries) could undermine the benefits of liberalisation. Citing its research, the Bank emphasised "the importance of liberalising reforms in agricultural trade on the part of both developing and industrialised countries, and the potential for the concepts of sensitive and special products to create significant exemptions, which would undermine this objective." Both the Philippines and Cuba objected to this comment, and indicated their intention to return to it at a later stage following closer examination of the statement.
Developing country delegates in Geneva privately questioned the wisdom of the Bank’s intervention, which they described as ‘unwarranted.’ The comments could be seen as prejudging the outcome of negotiations which are still in progress, they said.
No further meetings of the Agriculture Committee are planned until March 2007, although, if governments agree to restart the Doha round, special negotiating sessions could be held before then.
ICTSD reporting.