Trade talks get farm boost, struggle in other areas

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GENEVA, Feb 16 (Reuters): A revised negotiating text on agriculture has brought World Trade Organisation (WTO) members closer to their goal of a deal by the end of the year to open up world trade, diplomats said yesterday.
But negotiations in other areas such as industry and the rules governing trade still face big obstacles, they said.
India's WTO ambassador Ujal Singh Bhatia said the new agriculture text was a first but good step towards clinching a deal.
Trade ministers want to conclude the long-running Doha round this year, before a new US administration takes office and is distracted by settling in, and to inject confidence into a world economy battered by financial crisis.
To do that they hope to meet in Geneva in March or April to agree the outlines of a deal.
The revised texts, summarising the past six months of talks in the Doha round launched in 2001, prepare the way for that meeting, at which ministers will make trade offs between farming and industry, and possibly other areas like services and rules.
The Doha round explicitly aims to promote development so agriculture's importance to poor countries makes it central.
At Friday's review, rich and poor countries expressed appreciation for the way the chairman of the agriculture talks, New Zealand's WTO ambassador Crawford Falconer, had created the basis for further progress in his revision.
But speaker after speaker signalled tough negotiations next week by calling for changes to the exemptions proposed for both developed and developing countries to shield sensitive products from the impact of lower tariffs or subsidies.
In Brussels an official at the EU's executive commission also praised the revised document on farming.
But together with the revised draft on industry, plus a text that came out Tuesday on services and a recent negotiating text on trade rules, there is a lack of balance, he said.
The Doha round is likely to involve a deal in which rich countries cut their farm tariffs and trade-distorting farm subsidies in return for developing countries opening up their markets for industrial goods and services. That would also give a fillip to South-South trade.
For those trade-offs to take place at the hoped-for meeting of ministers in March or April, there first needs to be broad agreement in the individual areas of negotiation.
But the revised industry text may have dealt those talks a setback in its attempt to break the deadlock on the size of tariff cuts for developing countries' manufactured goods by linking them to the scale of exemptions they would enjoy.
And now developing countries, while welcoming the idea of a trade-off between the tariff cuts and the waivers, are concerned that they have lost the exemptions on which they had negotiated.
The WTO's 151 members are also divided on whether to include services, which account for the bulk of economic output, in the ministerial meeting. Around 30 countries keen to open up sectors from banking to telecoms say a deal is inconceivable without services, while others fear they would overload the meeting.