The chair of the
WTO agriculture negotiations, Kenyan Ambassador Stephen Karau,
has suggested that farm trade talks on domestic support may need to continue
beyond the organisation’s eleventh ministerial
conference, scheduled to take place this December in the Argentinean capital of
Buenos Aires.
At a negotiating
meeting on 1 June, Karau said some countries had emphasised that the ministerial “should not be seen as the
end of the journey.” The session was the first meeting convened by the chair to
report on his consultations since taking up the role in April.
In a dedicated
session of the negotiating body the following day, Karau
reminded negotiators that the ministerial also represented the agreed deadline
for establishing a “permanent solution” to the problems some developing
countries say they face under WTO farm subsidy rules when buying food at
minimum prices, as part of their public stockholding programmes.
A Buenos
Aires work programme?
At the negotiating session on 1 June, Karau told trade officials that some members were
considering whether the Buenos Aires ministerial should seek to agree a “work programme” setting out topics for further negotiation after
the meet.
However, he also
conveyed his impression that all WTO members were “genuinely and strongly
committed to a successful Ministerial Conference in Buenos Aires.”
A recent
negotiating paper by the Cairns Group of agricultural exporters is among those
looking at options for Buenos Aires “and beyond,” while a new submission by
Paraguay and Peru on market access issues also envisages talks continuing in a
structured process through to the twelfth ministerial conference in 2019.
At the last WTO
ministerial conference in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2015, members were unable to reach
consensus on whether to reaffirm negotiating mandates adopted in Doha fourteen
years previously – meaning that talks are continuing without a clear roadmap for
the future.
However, members
did reaffirm their strong commitment to advance
negotiations on remaining Doha issues, including agricultural domestic support,
market access, and export competition – the latter of which refers to export
subsidies and equivalent measures.
In Geneva last
week, Karau cited the “current challenging
environment for globalisation and international
trade” as among the factors informing countries’ assessment of what would be
possible in the run-up to the ministerial.
While G-33 members
have emphasised the importance of negotiating a
“special safeguard mechanism” which developing countries will be able to use to
raise tariffs temporarily in cases of sudden surges in import volumes or price
depression, agricultural exporters have argued that progress in this area
should be linked to market access concessions.
Similarly, while
the G-33 has underscored the need for WTO members to deliver on previous
commitments to negotiate a permanent solution on the issue of public
stockholding for food security purposes, some agricultural exporting countries
have said that this should be linked to progress in addressing trade
distortions arising from agricultural domestic support.
In a new
negotiating submission, the G-33 argued that developing countries now have an
“urgent need” for an effective and operational special safeguard mechanism, so
as to be able to address the negative effects of short-term food price
volatility on resource-poor small-scale farmers.
New
negotiating papers
The chair told
trade officials that as many as 14 new papers had been tabled by WTO members
since the last meeting of the agriculture negotiating body in November.
These include
proposals on domestic support from the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group in
January, as well as from the African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) group last
November, and a negotiating paper from the Cairns Group.
The Cairns Group
has called for new limits on trade-distorting domestic support, as well as
measures to tackle the concentration of this support on a limited number of
products, and has supported the initiative of the C-4 group of African
countries to reduce cotton subsidies.
WTO members
disagree on how best to proceed, including over how to define
“trade-distorting” support and what types of special arrangements should be
made for developing economies.
Paraguay
and Peru: improve access to markets
Two Latin
American farm exporting countries, Paraguay and Peru, put forward a new
negotiating paper calling for WTO members to agree on improving agricultural
market access. The submission is dated 24 May.
Instead of
tariffs, many countries use complex formulas to limit imports of the most
sensitive farm goods, which are often expressed as a function of an imported
product’s weight (e.g. €100 per tonne).
The new
submission argues that governments should convert barriers to their
agricultural markets into simple “ad valorem” tariffs – meaning duties
expressed as a straightforward percentage of a product’s value.
New WTO
commitments based on these simpler duties should be established by the organisation’s twelfth ministerial conference in 2019, the
proponents say.
These
commitments also should lower market access barriers by tackling instances of
unusually high tariffs or “tariff peaks”; reducing higher tariffs on more
processed farm goods, known as “tariff escalation”; and lowering levels of
in-quota tariffs.
The proponents
also say that developed countries should identify unusually high tariffs set
above 100 percent of the product value, and then cut the gap between the
maximum WTO limit and the actual applied tariff level for these products.
Developing countries should do the same for tariffs set at 150 percent or
higher.
Russia:
eliminate special agricultural safeguard
A new submission
from Russia, tabled on 29 May, calls for countries to agree to eliminate the
“special agricultural safeguard” provided for under Article 5 of the WTO’s
Agreement on Agriculture.
This tool was
established in 1994, at the end of the Uruguay Round of trade talks, to allow
some 39 countries to raise tariffs temporarily to address sudden import surges
or price depressions. Russia argues that the safeguard was meant only to be a
transitional tool to help countries adapt to possible adverse effects arising
from the liberalisation measures agreed at the time.
Moscow also
claims that continuing to allow some countries to use the safeguard is unfair
to newer members who are not permitted to use the instrument under their
accession terms – such as China, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Vietnam.
According to
Russia’s proposal, the safeguard clause would expire immediately for developed
countries, starting from the date of adoption of the relevant decision, while
developing countries could continue using it for three years on a gradually
dwindling percentage of their overall tariff lines.
Last November,
eight agricultural exporting countries made a similar call for the special
agricultural safeguard to be eliminated. However, countries that have used it
remain reluctant to phase it out.
Singapore:
sharing information on export restrictions
In a paper dated
26 May, Singapore called for more transparency in the use of agricultural
export prohibitions or restrictions. The paper builds on an earlier submission
tabled last year.
Consumers in
food-importing countries can be adversely affected by these measures,
especially at times of sudden spikes in international prices for food and farm
goods.
Singapore’s new
paper asks whether a 30-day advance notification period might be “practicable”
for exporting and importing countries. It invites countries to explore further
how to improve transparency in this area, and asks whether export prohibitions
and restrictions should apply to food bought for non-commercial humanitarian
purposes.