Alexandre Rocha<\/STRONG><\/P> S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 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 S\u00e3o Paulo.<\/P> According to Brazilian minister of Foreign Relations Celso Amorim, the meeting served to \u201creaffirm\u201d the group\u2019s unity and the commitment of its members with the three pillars of negotiation of the so-called WTO \u201cDoha Rounds,\u201d which focuses on, among other subjects, arrival at an agreement between integrants of the organ in the agricultural area.<\/P> The three pillars are: access to markets; domestic support, production subsidies for example; and export subsidies.<\/P> 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.<\/P> 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.<\/P> In Amorim\u2019s evaluation, today\u2019s meeting could serve to unblock a number of controversial matters that are practically deadlocked since the WTO meeting in Cancun, Mexico, last year.<\/P> \u201cWe will try to guarantee a good spectacle tomorrow (today)\u201d kidded Amorim, who was accompanied by ministers from Nigeria, India, Argentina and South Africa, all G-20 members.<\/P> 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.<\/P> Advances<\/STRONG><\/P> The Brazilian chancellor reiterated that the USA\u2019s 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 \u201cif they did not have expectations of being able to advance in negotiations.\u201d<\/P> \u201cIt is illusory, however, to imagine that tomorrow (today), we will have an agreement ready. The place for that is the WTO\u2019s Agriculture Committee,\u201d 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.<\/P> 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.<\/P> \u201cThe 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,\u201d according to a statement released by the G-20 after the meeting. The Doha Round is also known as the \u201cdevelopment round.\u201d<\/P> At the meeting, ministers also agreed that the increase in trade among developing countries must be one of the group\u2019s priorities, and they cited Brazilian president Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva\u2019s idea of creating a free trade agreement among member countries.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ministers from the group met yesterday in S\u00e3o Paulo. Today, representatives from Brazil and India, two members of the entity, will meet with authorities from the United States, Australia and the European Union. \u201cWe will try to guarantee a good spectacle,\u201d joked Celso Amorim, Brazilian chancellor, who believes in advancements in negotiations regarding agricultural protectionism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1454,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14132","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-foreign-affairs"},"wps_subtitle":"Ministers from the group met yesterday in S\u00e3o Paulo. Today, representatives from Brazil and India, two members of the entity, will meet with authorities from the United States, Australia and the European Union. \u201cWe will try to guarantee a good spectacle,\u201d joked Celso Amorim, Brazilian chancellor, who believes in advancements in negotiations regarding agricultural protectionism.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1454"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}