NAMA modalities paper shows up many areas of division

The paper on draft modalities for non-agriculture market access (NAMA) that will serve as the basis for WTO negotiations in the next ten days contains little in the form of agreed text, and more in terms of comments on the areas of present disagreement among the WTO members.

The paper, "Towards NAMA Modalities" was issued by the Chair of the NAMA negotiating group, Ambassador Don Stephenson of Canada, on 22 June afternoon.

Stephenson says in his introduction that he was requested to propose language of full modalities. "I regret that I am unable to fulfil that mandate, as a result of the failure of the Negotiating Group to find consensus on many important issues, and that the present report is, at best, a step in the direction of full modalities."

Most of the report is in the form of a table with three columns. Each issue is dealt with in the columns. The first column contains the negotiating mandates (the August 2004 framework and the Hong Kong Declaration). The second has textual language for possible modalities, some of which reflect consensus and in other cases is language proposed by the Chair. For many issues, there is no suggested text as there is no agreement.

The third column contains the Chair's commentary on the issues, including his view of the differences among the members, options and in some cases possible solutions.

The paper also has an Annex containing some textual proposals submitted by some members. This Annex could be criticised by some, because it includes proposals by some members but not by other members on the same issues.

Most glaringly, in the all-important issue of coefficients for the tariff-cutting formula, only two proposals are included: the Pakistan proposal that there be two coefficients (6 for developed countries and 30 for developing countries); and the proposal by six members (including US, Canada and Switzerland) that the coefficient for developed countries shall be at most five less than the developing country coefficient.

Missing from the Annex list is the proposal by the NAMA-11 group of developing countries, which contains several principles including less than full reciprocity (in which the coefficients for developed and developing countries must reflect that the latter reduce their tariffs on average by a lower percentage than the former).

The Chair also alludes to the dependence that the NAMA negotiations have had on what happens in agriculture.