WTO talks entering into sixth day!

After extending the 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to Friday in Abu Dhabi, coupled with overnight works of the negotiators, there was an indication that it might be extended to Saturday if the negotiators couldn't reach consensus by Friday midnight.
The deferred official closing ceremony of MC13 was postponed at least thrice on Friday and set at 10:00pm in Abu Dhabi, until our filing the report at 6:00pm in the capital city of United Arab Emirates (UAE).
WTO Spokesman Ismaila Dieng earlier in a brief statement to the press on Friday morning said: "Ministers continue to be engaged in intensive and difficult discussions on a package of agreements for adoption at MC13. As a result, in order to give more time for negotiations, the Formal Closing Session of MC13 has now been postponed to 5pm UAE time Friday, 1 March." According to Thursday's decision, it was postponed to 2:00pm on Friday.
Insiders aware of the development said that one more day might be required as key issues, including farm and fish subsidies, remained unresolved.
They said that India, the United States (US), and the European Union (EU) had been holding talks to address differences on agriculture, fisheries subsidies, WTO reforms, and e-commerce moratorium under the greenroom arrangements. China, Brazil, South Africa also joined the greenroom talk initiated by WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
Revised texts on some of these were circulated among the members on Friday morning but the differences continued forcing the negotiators to talk further.
Many of the delegates already left Abu Dhabi and some others were also on the way to leave even after extending their stay for a day. Only a few delegates were now there who were assigned to work further.
Meanwhile, South Africa withdrew its earlier opposition to the China-led proposed Investment Facilitation Agreement (IFD) putting India off guard. Two countries so far blocked the IFD to be included in the WTO rulebook as a purilateral agreement.
India argued that a permanent solution for public stockholding (PSH) for food security should be resolved first as it is the old mandated issue. The US pushed for market access for agriculture in equal priority.
The Cairns group of countries like Australia and Brazil, however, argued that PSH was a market distorting tool. They also opposed export restrictions.
"There may not be an outcome document but a chair statement or minister's reports are likely as the stance of all members remains the same," the official added.
Differences on the second phase of fisheries subsidies agreement also continued making the thing tough.
Developed and developing countries have also taken opposite stance on e-commerce moratorium. Though developed countries are in favour in continuing the moratorium means there will no customs duty on electronic transfer, developing countries like India, South Africa and Brazil are in favour of ending the moratorium means there should be legal scope to impose duties.
Earlier on Thursday, Bangladesh, along with 17 developing countries and African Group made a written submission on the contribution of the multilateral trading system to tackle environmental challenges.
In the submission, the countries called on all members to refrain from imposing of unilateral trade-related environmental measures that create unnecessary obstacles to trade or arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination between countries.
Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt and India in another joint-submission on 'TRIPS for development' called upon the TRIPS Council to examine how the TRIPS Agreement could facilitate transfer and dissemination of technologies to developing countries including Least Developed Countries (LDCs).
The four-day MC13 of the WTO started on Monday where trade ministers and senior officials of 164 members joined. An eight-member Bangladesh delegation headed by Ahasanul Islam Titu, State Minister for Commerce, participated the conference. The country tried to interests of the graduating LDCs.
Developed and developing countries have agreed to provide minimum benefit to the graduating LDCs, and decision has already been taken to provide three years extension to the graduating LDCs in terms of technical assistance and dispute settlement. Issue of market access is still unresolved.
It is also unclear that in the absence of breakthroughs in the major issues, whether the minimum agreed benefits to the LDCs will be endorsed or not.
Usually, all the decisions along with the ministerial declaration comes as an outcome package. "It will not be surprising if there is no such package finally," said a representative without anonymity.
An observer, however, put a question whether the additional hours are enough to produce some outcomes or like in the past unsuccessful conferences like in Seattle and Cancun the talks will be shifted to Geneva.

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[The writer is in Abu Dhabi at the invitation of the Secretariat of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), Geneva.]