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Developing-country groups form common front at TNC meeting

28 Jul 2007

Major groupings of developing countries put up a common front at the WTO on Thursday (26 July) on the process and broad substance of future negotiations of the Doha Round.

At the meeting of the Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), which oversees the Doha negotiations, eight groupings of developing countries (the G20, the G33, the ACP, the LDCs, the African Group, the Small and Vulnerable Economies - SVEs, the NAMA-11 and the Cotton-4), comprising a majority of developing countries, presented a joint statement of their assessment of the current situation after the circulation of the texts of the draft agriculture and NAMA modalities, and of what they consider to be central principles to guide the future negotiations.

The G90 (comprising the ACP, African and LDC Groups) and the NAMA-11 also presented a joint statement criticizing what they consider imbalances in the draft text on non-agricultural market access (NAMA) and calling for corrections to it. The joint G90-NAMA 11 statement is significant as it demonstrates that a majority of developing countries support the broad positions taken by the NAMA-11 as well as the SVEs and other vulnerable countries.

In recent weeks, there has been a controversy on what are the positions of a majority of developing countries. In what several trade observers see as a "divide and rule" attempt, the controversy was first stirred by the US and EU in their blame game following the failure of the G4 Ministerial in Potsdam (when they accused Brazil and India of not being representative of developing countries' views on NAMA.)

The controversy was further inflamed by the NAMA draft, which implied that certain key positions of the NAMA-11 were those of a very small minority, and that there was near unanimity in the WTO on the need for severe tariff cuts through the Swiss formula and its coefficients. This attempted portrayal of the "real" developing-country view has been dispelled by the joint position taken on the NAMA draft modalities by the G90-NAMA 11 statement.

At the TNC meeting Thursday, individual groupings, such as the ACP Group, African Group, LDC Group, G20, G33 and NAMA-11 also presented group statements, and many countries presented their national positions.

All in all, it was a strong display of preparedness by the developing countries as they attempted to position themselves at a crucial juncture of the Doha negotiations.

Resource: TWN Info Service on WTO and Trade Issues
Released on: 28 July 2007
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