India Stresses Farm Talks

Describing agriculture as the make-or-break issue for successful conclusion of the Doha round of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations, 17 developing countries, including India, have stressed on the importance of convergence of views on special products, special safeguard mechanism measures for developing countries and the issue of subsidy in agriculture.

"Agriculture is the make-or-break issue for the successful conclusion of the Doha round of trade negotiations. However, the time is running out without a major breakthrough on the modalities of future trade liberalisation that WTO members have to agree on at the fifth WTO ministerial at Cancun," a commerce ministry release on a meeting of developing countries said.

 

The meeting was held under the aegis of the government of India, Unctad-Department for international development project.

The developing country members agreed that special products and special safeguard mechanisms could provide developing countries with the much needed flexibility to address their development concerns.

Countries which deliberated on how best to ensure that the negotiations in WTO result in the modalities for future agricultural liberalisation said the issue of export competitiveness was equally important as also the issue of elimination of subsidies because a high level of subsidies affected the viability of their domestic markets.

This was particularly so because majority of the countries will have no recourse to measures apart from border measures or tariff to support their farmers.

While appreciating the inclusion of special products and special safeguard mechanisms in draft modalities for farm negotiations, they said the Harbinson draft left the actual design of special products and special safeguard mechanisms modalities open to technical consultations.

The countries said subsidies by developed countries undermined potential gains from farm trade to developing countries and their economic and social goals, including food security, rural development and poverty alleviation.

The other countries which attended the meeting included Brazil, Columbia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Peru, Korea, Turkey, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Venezuela.