Ministers gathered in Geneva for a World Trade Organisation meeting avoided engaging in negotiations about Doha but pledged shortly to take stock of the prospects for that intended accord, now in its ninth year of talks.
WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy said at a news conference that a breakthrough would be needed by the end of March for the deal to be completed in 2010, as heads of state have pledged to do at several G20 summits this year.
“End of March next year is probably the moment when we will know whether or not 2010 remains doable,” he said.
While the deadline was not necessarily firm, Lamy said all efforts to edge the accord to signature were welcome. “Anything that takes us nearer to the finishing line is a good thing.”
Developing countries sought in Geneva to show they are supportive of trade liberalisation and were not to blame for the inertia that has plagued the Doha negotiations. Jorge Taiana, foreign minister of Argentina, said the South-South pact showed developing countries were keen to clinch deals to expand trade. “This is a clear demonstration that the developing countries are willing to continue working on strengthening South-South trade and in a process of liberalisation compatible with development,” Taiana told a news conference.
The South-South deal includes trade heavyweights Brazil, India, Argentina and South Korea but not China.
It would reduce by one-fifth the actual tariffs countries apply to 70 percent of each other’s industrial goods rather than the maximum ceilings negotiated at the WTO. The precise details would be worked out by the end of September 2010. In the eight years since the Doha round was launched, at a meeting in Qatar, bilateral and regional trade deals have been signed worldwide, creating what has been called a “spaghetti bowl” of legal arrangements for exporters to navigate.
Most of the WTO’s 153 members have stressed the continued relevance of a global pact that would simplify trading rules and remove trade-distorting subsidies and tariffs that make it hard for producers in poorer countries to compete.
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk described it as an “absolute economic necessity” for poorer countries to get the Doha accord signed, also stressing that the agreement would give a boost to exporters worldwide.
“Trade can be an important pillar of global economic recovery, and recovery at home as well,” Kirk told reporters at the conclusion of the meeting, joking he felt like “the last man standing” given many ministers had left early.
The absence of a major item on the WTO ministerial agenda gave trade officials from developing countries, who rarely meet in person, the chance to hold a series of face-to-face meetings and seek to forge new regional alliances.
Ministers from India, the Mercosur group of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, and the SACU customs union of South Africa and its neighbours launched a study on a possible regional trade agreement between their countries.
And Brazil said it would open its markets to duty-free quota-free access on 80 percent of goods from mid-2010 from the least developed countries, rising to 100 percent in four years.
Diplomats involved in trade talks also said a deal to end the world’s longest running trade dispute over import tariffs on bananas was expected to be signed today between the European Union and Latin American countries.
The deal to end the 16 year-old “banana wars” — which also includes African Caribbean and Pacific states (ACP) and the United States — will cut the tariff paid on bananas from Latin America and shield the European Union from further legal action at the WTO, which has condemned its import regime.
