WTO ASKS AGRICULTURE NEGOTIATORS TO SUBMIT DATA TO BE PART OF MODALITIES

By Tengku Noor Shamsiah Tengku Abdullah

KUALA LUMPUR, July 13 (Bernama) -- World Trade Organisation (WTO)
Agriculture negotiations chairperson David Walker has asked members to use the
coming summer break to provide the information needed for the Secretariat to
compile data that will become part of the "modalities".

He made the call at the negotiations last meeting in Geneva on July 9.

The meeting marked the end of a year of work on data and "templates" --
blank tables or forms for governments -- to use to list their final commitments
and the accompanying data.

"Members now have "road maps" for how to take these technical tasks into the
second and final step in all three "pillars" of the farm talks -- market access,
domestic support and export subsidies and related issues," he said in a
statement to Bernama today.

Walker also reported on his consultations with some members on two areas of
substance: the special safeguard mechanism that will allow developing countries
to raise import duties temporarily to deal with import surges or price falls;
and tariff simplification.

A handful of delegations used this meeting, which lasted less than an hour,
to raise or repeat some of their concerns, including some countries' view that
the present focus on data and templates should not be allowed to delay work on
the talks' substance.

On July 6, a paper from the G-20 Group of Developing Countries sparked a
debate about whether negotiators should try to create templates (i.e. blank
forms or tables for presenting commitments or data) for members'
commitments in all areas of farm talks or whether some parts of the templates
are linked so closely to the substance that the substance should be
settled before designing the templates.

These countries were also concerned that the focus on the templates could
delay work on the substance.

Some other countries objected, arguing that work on all the templates should
go ahead first (front loading the templates) to save time when the substance
of the "modalities" is eventually agreed.

Meanwhile, negotiators are starting to move from the first step of
identifying the data needed to the second step of designing templates, at least
in some areas.

In the July 6 meeting, Australia and Canada tabled "road maps" on
suggestions on how to move ahead and eventually create the templates in
domestic support and export subsidies for agriculture as a whole and for
cotton.

This followed a presentation by the European Union (EU) in May on a
road map for the third "pillar" -- market access.
-- BERNAMA