Circulation of WTO DDA Agricultural Negotiations Challenge Paper
In particular, Ambassador Falconer stated in his paper that a reasonable consensus on the tariff reduction rate would be at least 50% on average for the developed countries with a flexibility of 1-5% of agricultural tariff lines to be designated as “sensitive”. He went on to say that it is realistic and reasonable if 5-8% of developing countries’ tariff lines could be designated as “Special Products”. Some other core points of the paper are as follows:
* Tariffs should be classified into four tiers based upon their level and those in the highest band should be reduced by 60-85%.
* At least 10-20% tariff cuts should be applied for developing countries’ “Special Products”.
* The U.S. should reduce their overall trade distorting domestic support down to between USD19 billion and the low teens.
* On food aid, there is a general support that it should be in a fully grant form in principle, the emergency situation should be declared by relevant international organizations and in-kind support in non-emergency situations should be eliminated, among others.
Based on the circulated challenge paper, intense negotiations are expected to be held in Geneva with a view to reaching a consensus on modalities within 2-3 months. Members are also expecting that negotiations on non-agricultural products would follow suit with a similar time frame with the non-agricultural market access Chair’s text to be submitted soon. Once the modalities on how to liberalize the agricultural and non-agricultural products’ market have been agreed upon, each member country will begin the drafting process of the country schedule. Following a multilateral review of this plan and with the conclusion of the remaining areas of negotiations such as services, rules and trade facilitation, the entire DDA negotiations will finally come to an end.
* Modalities: principles and methodologies on how to liberalize markets, including tariff and subsidy reduction formula, and scope and treatment of “sensitive products”
The DDA negotiations started in November 2001 and have passed several negotiation deadlines. Especially, last year in July, the conflicts between the major countries in the negotiations on the tariff reduction formula and subsidies reduction formula led to the deadlock of the negotiations. However, this year, on January 27, at an informal ministerial meeting in Davos, it was agreed to restart the DDA negotiations and, as such, working level negotiations have been going on in Geneva. Also, the negotiations gained new momentum at a ministerial meeting among the U.S., EC, India, Brazil, Australia and Japan (G6) that was held on April 12 in Deli, where they agreed to exert their best efforts to reach an agreement on the DDA negotiations by the end of this year.
There exists a big gap in terms of the major member countries’ positions on agricultural and non-agricultural products and it is expected that future talks will be difficult as the DDA is connected with the domestic situations of major member countries such as the possible renewal of the U.S. TPA mandate, which will be expiring on July 1. However, member countries are concerned that the failure of the DDA negotiations will harm the credibility of the multilateral trade system, therefore, it is expected that the member countries will make their best efforts in the next several months to move the negotiations forward and come to an agreement by the end of the year.
The Korean government will be ready for a possible rapid progress of negotiations and actively participate in the negotiations, while preparing its official positions on the paper through conducting in-depth analysis into the paper and working closely with other like-minded countries at the same time.
* Korea actively participates in the G10 (net importers of agricultural products group) and G33 (developing countries’ special products and special safeguard group).
이 보도자료는 Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade가(이) 작성해 뉴스와이어 서비스를 통해 배포한 뉴스입니다. 뉴스와이어는 편집 가이드라인을 준수합니다.