After hectic negotiations for five days-exceeding the scheduled closing by nearly 24 hours-the WTO Trade Ministers concluded their talks this evening without any commitment by rich countries to check subsidies.
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According to the agreement adopted on agricultural exports, developing countries must also eliminate their subsidies, but not until 2018, and with some exceptions until 2023. “Given the scale and significance of New Zealand’s agricultural export earnings, the removal of any instrument that can distort market forces and disadvantage our exporters is an important step forward”, says Federated Farmers National President Dr William Rolleston. “We are happy. We hope to carry a message of hope”, said Amina Mohammed, Kenyan foreign minister and the conference’s chairperson.
During the talks, India had made a strong pitch on protecting its farmers.
On the controversial U.S. and European Union proposal to expand the WTO agenda into new issues, the Nairobi declaration states simply: “some wish to identify and discuss other issues for negotiation; others do not”. Commerce and industry minister Nirmala Sitharaman has rejected the allegations against India and said: “India blocking WTO?! That date of 2017 has gone through, which is completely unacceptable to me…so I would still appeal to delete the date given here”.
The agreement covering cotton provides 2016 as the first date from which the poor countries, which include 35 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and the Cotton Four countries in Africa – Burkina Faso, Benin, Chad and Mali and other developing countries – can begin to export cotton duty-free. “We are thoroughly disappointed on this score”.
Notwithstanding the difficulty in the negotiations, the draft Declaration reflects India’s demand for a reaffirmation from all members to work towards a permanent solution on public stockholding.
The Ministers also reaffirmed “the pre-eminence of the WTO as the global forum for trade rules setting and governance”.
But they agreed to disagree about the potential for success in the Doha round of talks.
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The Geneva-based WTO, which has invited Liberia and Afghanistan to become its 163rd and 164th members, has been trying and largely failing to agree on a worldwide package of trade reforms since a meeting in Doha in 2001 hatched an ambitious plan for knocking down trade barriers. Sitharaman said that some countries are pushing their agenda with undue haste.
