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The Chair of the negotiations on Non-Agriculture Market Access (NAMA) at the WTO has reported that he would be working on a text that would reflect members' positions on modalities for the consideration of Ministers at a meeting expected to take place later this month in Geneva.

Following the failure of the WTO to finalise modalities for agriculture and non-agriculture market access (NAMA) at the scheduled deadline of the end of April, the WTO's Director-General Mr. Pascal Lamy warned that the price of 'failure' would be high. A new deadline of the end of June has now been set, for a mini-Ministerial meeting to finalise the modalities.

In the lead-up to next week

The

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.

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

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.

By the end of next week, the world is likely to know whether the Doha round of multilateral trade negotiations

Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath has said he will walk out of World Trade Organisation talks early as members failed to reach agreement.

A senior US farm trade official on Friday restated Washington's negotiating policy for an 'ambitious' outcome to the Doha Development Agenda negotiations, arguing that the G-20 framework falls well short of US expectations especially relating to the formula tariff-cutting thresholds for developing countries.