Farmers welcome collapse of WTO talks, business leaders deplore outcome

TOKYO, July 31 Kyodo - Japanese farmers were relieved Wednesday to find an escape from an influx of cheap imported farm products as free trade talks under the World Trade Organization collapsed Tuesday in Geneva, but business leaders deplored the lost opportunity to expand market access for Japanese industrial products in developing countries.

Domestic farmers are happy with the breakdown of the ministerial meeting in Geneva for the Doha Round of trade talks because Tokyo would have been forced to accept a deal, allowing each rich country to designate 4 percent of all farm products as sensitive products to be exempted from steep tariff cuts, if the WTO members had struck an accord.

Japan has sought at least 8 percent of all farm products to be exempted from sharp tariff cuts, but most member economies agreed to limit the exemption up to 6 percent, including 2 percentage points to be additionally granted in exchange for increasing the amount of low-tariff imports.

An official at a local agricultural cooperative in Okinawa Prefecture, where sugarcane is a main farm product, said, ''We had a sense of crisis since the negotiations developed in an extremely unfavorable way (for Japan). We appreciate to some extent the government's response in the negotiations because it did not easily make a compromise.''Yoshitaka Matsushita, a senior official at JA Kagoshima prefectural union of agricultural cooperatives, said he was worried about the fate of sugarcane farming on the southern islands in the prefecture.

''I was concerned that people may disappear from the islands if sugar is removed from the list of sensitive products,'' he said.

Farmers in Hokkaido, a key production base for farm products protected with high tariffs, such as butter and potato for starch, were also relieved about the development.

But an official at a local agricultural cooperative in Japan's northernmost prefecture said Japanese farmers will need to boost cost-competitiveness as globalization in the agricultural sector is a general trend.

Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Masatoshi Wakabayashi told a news conference in Geneva, although Japan did not face a barrage of criticism over its call to designate a higher percentage of farm products as politically sensitive, only a handful of economies sympathized with Tokyo's position.

Meanwhile, business circles are worried that Japan could be placed in a disadvantageous position without a WTO accord under the Doha Round as Tokyo has been left behind by other rival economies, such as South Korea and the United States, in promoting bilateral free trade pacts.

Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Akira Amari said in a statement the collapse of the free trade talks deals a severe blow to Japan.

Earlier in the day, Amari told reporters in the Swiss city that with the failure of the ministerial meeting in Geneva, ''We cannot sell Japanese products to other countries by lowering the hurdle -- tariffs.''Japanese manufacturers such as automakers had hoped for cuts in tariffs on industrial products in emerging economies.

An official at a Japanese carmaker said, ''It is the worst result that it (the trade talks) collapsed without any schedule for resumption (of the negotiations).'' A senior official at the Japan Business Federation, the nation's most powerful business lobby known as Nippon Keidanren, said, ''I'm concerned that the reliability of the WTO could be shaken by the breakdown of the negotiations.''