WTO negotiations resume after summer break

This round of discussion is supposed to be a big effort to conclude the Doha Development Round as also to provide a boost to the activity level of the Round.

This round of discussions on modalities of agriculture and NAMA have become pretty urgent given the earlier rounds of heated debates and discussions that took place in July. The meeting on Monday, 3 September was a round of informal open-ended Special Session of the Agriculture Committee deliberating mainly upon the logistical issues and scheduling further meetings on the issues to be covered in the discussion of the draft modalities text on Agriculture.

From the earlier rounds of discussions held in July, there is still an opinion that the draft text on Agriculture has scope of renegotiation between the developed and the developing countries and therefore end with substantial conclusions. But some developing nations have also expressed their apprehensions about the role of the US and the level of concessions that it would agree/able to provide following the passage of the US Farm Bill, 2007 by the US House of Representatives. It looks it might act as a constraint for the round to be concluded successfully.

Although the negotiations schedule for NAMA is much less clear, the chair of the NAMA negotiations, Canadian Ambassador Don Stephenson, indicated that he would re-convene the NAMA talks in the week starting 17 September, or a fortnight after the resumption of the agriculture talks.

In the intense last week of discussions and heated exchanges that followed, the NAMA text had faced a rebuttal from all developing country blocs as well as the individual countries. The delegates had attacked Stephenson's NAMA draft modalities paper for being biased against the developing countries and for not satisfying the mandates of "less than full reciprocity" and of attaining balance between the levels of ambition in NAMA and agriculture. It was made clear that the forthcoming round of NAMA discussions would not be using the Draft modalities text as the basis for negotiations.

Next open-ended meeting has been scheduled towards the end of next week and further discussions in small groups are to resume from Monday, 10 September.

However, in the meantime, it has been observed that the developing countries’ delegations have developed a tendency of watching the US moves and offers first before reacting or responding in the discussions.

Resource: TWN Info Service on WTO and Trade Issues
Released on: 6 September,2007