Archive - Jun 2006 - Article

The Dance of the Seven Veils appears pedestrian when compared with the strip-tease currently being performed by the world's trade negotiators in Geneva. They are slowly and finally revealing their concessions to open global trade - just in time.

New proposals on global trade rules on agriculture and industrial goods (Non Agricultural Market Access or NAMA) released today show a deadlock in negotiations that could spell failure for the Doha round of trade talks.

The Draft Modalities on Agriculture and NAMA are now available on the WTO website.

The draft texts released today by the WTO on trade rules for agriculture and industrial products reflect the broad divergences that remain between WTO Members over the Doha Round, according to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. The possibility for concluding the Doha Round this year is becoming increasingly remote.

On the eve of the issuance of a draft modalities paper on agriculture by the Chair of the WTO's agriculture negotiations, the ACP Group has submitted a paper updating its position on various issues in agriculture modalities.

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Global civil society should not be lulled into complacency by gloomy media reports about the deadlock in the Doha Round negotiations.

Several developing countries have argued that they should not be obliged to undertake significant tariff reductions in agriculture, and advocated that the rates of cuts in the formula should be lower than those proposed by the Group of 20.

The 'end of June' process at the WTO is expected to start in earnest on Wednesday (21 June) with the issuance of two papers - the draft modalities on agriculture and on non-agricultural market access (NAMA).

Several WTO members submitted draft texts last week to the Chair of the Negotiating Group on NAMA for his preparation of the draft modalities paper, which is to be issued this week. Among them were the NAMA-11 and the small and vulnerable economies.