Brazil says big effort still needed in WTO farm talks

Sat Jul 19, 2008 9:37am EDT
By Jonathan Lynn
GENEVA (Reuters) - Agriculture superpower Brazil believes World Trade Organisation farm talks still need a lot of work if next week's high-stakes trade meeting is to yield anything meaningful, its foreign minister said on Saturday.
Celso Amorim, in Geneva for consultations ahead of the week-long meeting where ministers aim to thrash out a deal to outline a global trade pact, said a few myths were circulating.
"One of these myths is that agriculture is almost ready and all the problem now is NAMA," he told a news conference, using the WTO jargon for industrial goods.
"This is a self-serving assertion of those who do not want to do their tasks in agriculture, which was, has been, and is the engine of the round."
Next week's talks will focus on tariff and subsidy cuts, and the main exceptions to them, in the core areas of agriculture and industry. The talks will also look at the prospects of further liberalization in services such as banking.
Ministers hope to agree the parameters of a deal in the WTO's Doha round, launched in late 2001 to open up world trade, which could then be completed in the coming months.
Among the outstanding issue in agriculture are proposed cuts in U.S. farm subsidies and the unwillingness of rich countries to cap tariffs on agricultural products, Amorim said.
MISINFORMATION
Developing countries such as Brazil want rich nations to open their markets by cutting tariffs, and argue their trade-distorting subsidies squeeze out poor-country farmers.
Amorim said there was a lot misinformation surrounding the WTO talks.
For instance talk of a 70 percent cut in U.S. subsidies was misleading, given the lowest proposed level of $13 billion was double what the United States is currently paying because of the surge in food prices.
That was because the percentage figure referred to the ceilings negotiated at the WTO, not the actual amount, he said.
Rich countries focused on the actual figure rather than the negotiated ceiling when it came to discussing developing country tariffs, he said.
Even with the special treatment for developing countries, Brazil's highest industrial tariffs would fall 30 percent to about 23-25 percent under current proposals, he said.
In contrast rich countries were refusing to cap farm tariffs at 100 percent, or were prepared to offer only "pitiful" compensation for doing so.
Amorim said an agreement was emerging after intensive negotiations on cuts in developing country industrial tariffs.
But he warned rich countries against overloading the deal with new demands on "anti-concentration" and "sectorals".
These refer to proposals to prevent developing countries using waivers to shield entire sectors such as automobiles or textiles from tariff cuts on the one hand, and measures to encourage them to engage in voluntary extra deals to reduce tariffs further or eliminate them altogether on sectors such as chemicals or car parts.
"This is a recipe for failure," he said.
Amorim added he had told WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy to allow plenty of time for members to study any revisions that might be made to the latest negotiating texts to avoid the meeting breaking up as happened in Cancun, Mexico, in 2003.
(Editing by Matthew Jones)