BRUSSELS, 19 February 2004 — Commonwealth trade ministers expressed optimism yesterday about the prospects for reviving global trade talks but stressed the rich world must address poor nations’ demands on agriculture.
A Commonwealth mission led by Nigerian Commerce Minister Alhaji Idris Waziri was in Brussels for talks with EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy after also visiting Geneva, Tokyo and Washington.
“Everywhere we went the response has been very, very positive,” Waziri said, commenting on hopes for an early resumption of talks at the World Trade Organization (WTO). “There’s a willingness on the part of all parties to show commitment to come back to the negotiating table to ensure a successful conclusion to the (WTO’s) Doha development round,” he said.
But Waziri stressed that the rich world led by the EU and the United States would have to show greater flexibility on agriculture, which he noted accounts for 70-80 percent of developing nations’ economies.
“There is no way we can improve the living standards of our people, there is no way we can fight poverty and there is no way we can fight unemployment without addressing the issue of agriculture,” he said.
“We believe our developed partners should address the issue of domestic support, the issue of export subsidies, which make it very, very difficult for us to compete with them in our agricultural products.”
Efforts to reduce world trade barriers, launched in November 2001 in the Qatari capital Doha, have ground to a halt since the collapse of a WTO ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico in September.
The Cancun session failed after bickering over cross-border investment and competition added to a more fundamental dispute over farm subsidies in richer countries and the high tariffs on agricultural exports from poorer nations.
The Commonwealth mission, that also includes Barbados and Fiji, said the EU was showing signs of flexibility on the so-called Singapore issues, notably trade facilitation, which helped scupper the Cancun meeting.
“We all should go back to negotiations with a positive, flexible attitude. Nobody should go back with the kind of position we had at Cancun,” Waziri said, ahead of talks between his delegation and Lamy today.
Meanwhile, trade ministers and officials from a dozen African countries, the EU and the United States yesterday began two days of informal talks in Mombasa, Kenya aimed at reviving the stalled Doha round of WTO negotiations. The so-called development round of free trade negotiations collapsed in Mexico last September amid rows about rich countries’ agricultural subsidies and attempts to push investment and procurement issues onto the agenda.
Asked whether these closed-door talks could revive the Doha round, Tanzanian Trade Minister Juma Ngasongwa said: “That’s the idea, to see how we can move forward. There is a possibility to have a closer understanding about what is at stake and therefore be able to design a program that will direct us towards (restarting) the negotiations.”
The minister went on to spell out one of the persistent gripes of developing countries. “We (in Tanzania) have 80 percent of our population engaged in agriculture so what we are saying is ... reduce your subsidies so that we can participate in your markets both in the level of raw materials but also manufactured products,” he said.
“For the past 10 years we have undertaken economic and political reforms, we have liberalized, but at the same time you people in Europe, Japan and the US are not liberalizing, you have built up a lot of barriers which make our products uncompetitive,” he said. “So how can you tell us to continue to undertake these reforms when on the other hand you are doing exactly the opposite?” he asked.