Alexandre Rocha
São Paulo – Ministers from countries making up G-20, a group against agricultural protectionism in rich countries, in the World Trade Organization (WTO) scope, met yesterday (12) in São Paulo.
According to Brazilian minister of Foreign Relations Celso Amorim, the meeting served to “reaffirm” the group’s unity and the commitment of its members with the three pillars of negotiation of the so-called WTO “Doha Rounds,” which focuses on, among other subjects, arrival at an agreement between integrants of the organ in the agricultural area.
The three pillars are: access to markets; domestic support, production subsidies for example; and export subsidies.
The meeting, which took place one day before the beginning of the 11th United nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), also served for the G-20 members to discuss proposals which will be presented today (13) at an NG-5 meeting. NG-5 is made up of Brazil, India, Australia, the United States and the European Union.
Brazil and India are integrants of G-20, the USA and EU are the major subsidy providers and Australia presides over the Cairns Group, a block made up of agricultural exporting countries.
In Amorim’s evaluation, today’s meeting could serve to unblock a number of controversial matters that are practically deadlocked since the WTO meeting in Cancun, Mexico, last year.
“We will try to guarantee a good spectacle tomorrow (today)” kidded Amorim, who was accompanied by ministers from Nigeria, India, Argentina and South Africa, all G-20 members.
Besides these countries, participants of the ministerial meeting include ministers from Bolivia, Chile, China, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Paraguay, Philippines, Tanzania, Thailand, Venezuela and Zimbabwe, as well as the WTO general director, Supachai Panitchpakdi.
Advances
The Brazilian chancellor reiterated that the USA’s commercial representative, Robert Zoellic, and the negotiator from the EU, Pascal Lamy, would not have come to Brazil to participate in the NG-5 meet “if they did not have expectations of being able to advance in negotiations.”
“It is illusory, however, to imagine that tomorrow (today), we will have an agreement ready. The place for that is the WTO’s Agriculture Committee,” he said. The idea, according to the minister, is to have an accord negotiated by the WTO council meeting, taking place in the second week of July.
Amorim and his colleagues made it clear that the G-20 wants to discuss concepts, not ready-made formulas regarding the three pillars of the Doha Rounds. The chancellor stressed that, since Cancun, there has been at least one advance in negotiations, for the European Union has recognized agricultural subsidies must come to an end.
“The true liberalization of agricultural trade must include reforms that reach these barriers and distortions. That would be a great contribution to the development goal of the (Doha) Rounds,” according to a statement released by the G-20 after the meeting. The Doha Round is also known as the “development round.”
At the meeting, ministers also agreed that the increase in trade among developing countries must be one of the group’s priorities, and they cited Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s idea of creating a free trade agreement among member countries.
