Agri Negotiations Push Forward at WTO

New Data on TRQ, Food Security

Speaking in the first informal agriculture negotiations meeting on 18 January 2013 of the year, the chairperson, who is New Zealand’s ambassador, said he has not decided yet how the next round of discussions should be organized. However, he made three points:

· the information that is being compiled and circulated on the topics currently under discussion and other issues (see below) will hopefully be a catalyst for this year’s discussions

· those discussions should distinguish between technical issues and questions requiring political decisions

· members intending to submit new proposals should do so quickly, but after they have discussed them with other members in order to test whether agreement will be possible by the 3–6 December 2013 Bali Ministerial Conference.

Since the December 2011 conference in Geneva, the objective has been to explore whether any parts of a considerably broader Doha Round draft outline deal in agriculture could be settled earlier than the rest of the draft and in time for the Bali conference in Indonesia.

Ambassador Adank summarized what had happened in 2012, which started slowly but saw new proposals and more meetings in the second half of the year, the last one on 16 November.

Proposals and data

Two proposals are currently on the table. Both envisage an early agreement on the relevant paragraphs of the December 2008 draft outline deal known as the draft “modalities”:

· TRQ Administration: the Group of 20 developing countries (G-20, coordinated by Brazil), an alliance in the WTO agriculture talks is seeking early agreement on tighter disciplines for administering tariff quotas (or tariff-rate quotas, “TRQs”). This is where duties for quantities inside the quotas are lower than quantities outside. Some countries argue that the way the quotas are managed (including the methods for allocating the quotas to importers or exporters, and various other administrative practices), can be too cumbersome and hamper exporters’ ability to access markets.

· Food security: the G-33 group of developing countries (a group seeking extra special treatment to protect their poor farmers, with Indonesia as the coordinator), proposes adopting provisions that would loosen disciplines on domestic support, including public stockholding in order to enhance food security by supporting poor farmers.

Some members have asked for more and more up-to-date data to help them negotiate these issues. Shortly before the New Year break, the Secretariat circulated the latest data from members’ notifications on tariff-quota administration, and on how much of the quotas were used by imports.