Informal WTO ministerial meet in May-end

Trade ministers from key member-countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO) would hold informal talks on the margins of the OECD Ministerial Meeting in Paris scheduled on May 24-26 to take stock of progress and understand the main issues.

This comes in the backdrop of the circulation of new draft negotiating texts last week by the WTO on agriculture, industrial goods and sectorals.

“The text on consensus has not emerged yet, after which we will take a final call on the draft texts. We are clear that this is a development round, so that has to be reflected in the final agreement. This would be taken up on the margins of the WTO meeting,” commerce and industry Anand Sharma told reporters here on Tuesday.

Sectorals have become one of the main hurdles. Sectoral negotiations relate to tariff cuts for an entire industry sector such as automobiles or gems and jewellery. The US had been pressurising emerging countries like China, India and Brazil to participate in the sectoral negotiations. However, developing countries have said that participation in sectorals is voluntary and have so far not shown any interest to sign up for the talks.

“We are examining the paper (draft text) on sectorals. We will have a review meeting on it soon. However, let me reiterate the participation in sectorals is not mandatory … India favours early conclusion of the deal and we will continue working with our coalition partners on this,” Sharma said.

Technical discussions are already underway at the WTO headquarters in Geneva, where negotiating teams from all the 153 member-countries are trying to hammer out a deal, in the round initiated in 2001 in Doha.

Last week after the release of the draft negotiating texts, WTO director general Pascal Lamy expressed severe discontent over the way the talks had been progressing.

He said there was “serious risk of failure” (of Doha) and urged members to not to overlook “the consequences of throwing away 10 years of solid multilateral work”. He also directed all countries to “use the upcoming weeks to talk to each other and build bridges” to agree on the deal broadly by the end of 2011.

The Indian government has not yet taken a formal stand on the new texts, as those are still under review. Sharma said a decision on this would be taken soon, adding there should not any deviation from the development agenda. He also said India would abide by the 2011 deadline to close the talks, as was decided by the Group of 20 countries.

WTO members are expected to meet to identify the progress made and the gaps that still remain on April 29 in Geneva.