Hectic efforts in Nairobi to strike WTO deal

NAIROBI, Dec 18: The members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) were relentlessly trying to reach a consensus for adopting a ministerial declaration at the 10th ministerial conference of WTO in Nairobi, Kenya by Friday midnight (Kenyan time).

But they did not reach any consensus for striking a deal by adopting the ministerial declaration till our going to press at 10.00 pm (BDT) on Friday. There was, however, optimism that a deal would be signed, finally.

"There is no crisis, and we are negotiating. All parties are in table," said Amina Mohamed, chairperson of the ministerial conference, at a press briefing on Friday evening.

The negotiators spend the whole Friday to reduce their gaps and break the deadlock.  

"We all are in a problem-solving mode. Most parts of the text are already cleaned," she expressed optimism on reaching a deal finally.  

The conference started on Tuesday and scheduled to conclude on Friday. But latest development indicated that members have to spend Friday night to bring the declaration.

Earlier, the delegates spent the whole Thursday night in debating and discussing the proposed draft text of declaration, placed to the members.

The major difference on the proposed text is agriculture. There is a proposal to eliminate export subsidies on agriculture products by 2020 for the developed countries and by 2023 for the developing countries.    

But the text did not mention clearly on special safeguard mechanism (SSM) and public stockholding programmes for food security. India along with some other developing nations rejected it.

Some delegates opined that draft text makes it clear that the Nairobi ministerial is not going to end with a 'LDC package', as predicted earlier on Thursday.

The proposed draft text of declaration included relaxation of Rules of Origin (ROO) and service waiver for the LDCs.

But, there was no development on 'commercially-meaningful' duty-free, quota-free (DFQF) market access.

The US continued its stance of not allowing cent per cent DFQF market access to all the LDCs under the WTO framework.

Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed had a bilateral meeting with United States Trade Representative (USTR) Ambassador Michael Froman on Thursday afternoon.

However, neither DFQF for all the LDCs nor revival of the suspended GSP scheme for Bangladesh got any positive note from USTR.

In a short briefing session with some selected journalists, the USTR ambassador also ruled out the possibility of providing cent per cent DFQF access for Bangladesh, Cambodia and Nepal.

"The duty-free market access is linked with the completion of negotiations under WTO. But those are still inconclusive," he said.

Among the LDC group, Haiti and Lesotho continued to oppose cent per cent DFQF for all LDCs.

Mr Tofail Ahmed, however, presided over a meeting of LDC group on Friday and asserted that the LDCs stuck to their position on commercially meaningful market access and legally binding commitments.

Bangladesh continued to pursue for inclusion of commitment 'to improve' status of DFQF in the declaration as a paragraph.

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