| |
Contributions from
the Column
Facts and trends
As Cancún approaches: Bundestag debate and new NGO campaign
Ahead of the Cancún world trade talks: lots of issues still unsettled
BMZ budget 2004
Basic education
GTZ's annual report: income growth
India plans
Interview with Jürgen Wilhelm:
40 years of DED: "Our work will become more political"
KfW annual report: lending commitments reduced
Lesotho: Lahmeyer found guilty of corruption
Cooperation with Namibia
8-9/2003
|
|
[ Agricultural trade, access to generic drugs, new issues ]
Ahead of the Cancún world trade talks:
lots of issues still unsettled
With only a few weeks to go till the WTO ministerial conference in Cancún (10 – 14 September), the positions of the 145 WTO members on a number of major issues are still worlds apart. An overview:
Liberalisation of agricultural trade will be the most important point on the agenda in Cancún. The United States and the big agricultural exporters of the Cairns Group are pushing for markets to be opened as wide and as fast as possible, whereas the European Union (EU) and many developing countries stress the need to protect their own agriculture. A compromise here could be furnished by the 'Uruguay formula', which would require the industrialised countries to lower agricultural duties by an average of 36 percent and the developing countries to make a corresponding cut of 24 percent. In addition, the developing countries are calling on the EU and United States to make a significant reduction in trade-distorting farm subsidies. Whether the recent decision to reform EU agricultural policy is enough to satisfy the poor countries is uncertain but observers consider it unlikely (see Comment on page 317 of this issue).
Cancún could also come to grief over the issue of poor countries' access to patent-protected drugs, which has attracted massive public attention in the last six months. As a matter of fact, the conditions under which poor countries are allowed to import generic drugs were supposed to be defined and agreed back in December 2002 but the United States lodged a solitary vote against a compromise proposal (see D+C 2003:1, p. 9). At an informal ministerial meeting at the end of June in Sharm el-Sheik in Egypt, the US government signalled that it was willing to make concessions but it faces stiff resistance from the American pharmaceutical industry. So the crucial negotiations on this issue at present are not taking place in the WTO but between the US government and the big US pharmaceutical companies.
Inclusion of the so-called Singapore issues - which include investment, competition policy and government procurement – in the list of topics defined for negotiation in the Doha Round is a demand mostly backed by the industrialised countries. The developing countries argue that the resolutions passed in earlier rounds of talks should first be fully implemented. After the ministerial meeting at Sharm-el-Sheik, the Indian government announced that it would not agree at present to the inclusion of any new topics for negotiation. There are too many questions still to be settled about the Singapore issues, it said – for example, whether negotiation should be confined to foreign direct investment or whether it should also include portfolio investment.
In the middle of July (at the time this issue went to press), observers reckoned that the Cancún Round probably won't produce any final decisions on major issues such as the liberalisation of agricultural markets, but would nevertheless not be called a failure but an important step in the right direction. The big question is how much of the negotiating still to be done can be accomplished in the run-up to Cancún. Opportunities are further WTO preparation meetings scheduled in Geneva and, above all, another informal ministerial meeting slated for the end of July in Montreal. (ell)
|
