World Trade Organization (WTO) makes modest progress on farm export subsidies

The 10th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization concluded in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi on Saturday.

“The meeting is still on since last night”, sources said, adding that a small group of countries – India, the US, EU, China and Brazil – are discussing the issues.

They have also agreed to conditions that will ensure worldwide food aid does not damage global trade or production in aid recipient countries.

Trade rules can – and do – undermine food security in developing countries in a number of ways, and many of those issues are at the center of the WTO’s agriculture negotiations.

US Trade Representative Michael Froman said the agreement “marked a turning point”.

Change is coming… Australian farmers set to benefit from the WTO phasing out agricultural export subsidies and restricting agricultural export credits.

WTO Director General Roberto Azevedo in a statement hailed the agreement as the “most significant outcome on agriculture” in the organisation’s 20-year history, according to an AFP report.

“Achievements at a WTO level also remove the need to develop bilateral solutions with individual trading partners, so we hope there are more deals of this nature to come from the WTO”. The elimination of the export subsidies is extremely important.

Developing countries will also keep the flexibility to cover marketing and transport costs for agriculture exports until the end of 2023, and the poorest and food-importing countries will enjoy additional time to cut export subsidies.

While the host Kenya said that WTO members were working on a draft declaration, the WTO secretariat was busy deciding on a new time for the closing session.

Afghanistan has until June 30 to ratify the agreement, the final step before becoming a full member of the organisation that underpins the global system of worldwide trade.

If rich countries are permitted to jettison the Doha Round and put their own priority issues on the table instead, we’ll be looking at what the late great USA baseball legend Yogi Berra called “déjà vu all over again” – a few developed countries setting the agenda and writing the rules in their own interests.

The declaration also enshrines different approaches to the Doha Development Agenda aimed at addressing the needs of less developed countries in their economic development. Wish to say that SSM was not even on the cards when we arrived at Nairobi.

“We note with concern the slow and uneven recovery from the severe economic and financial crisis of 2008, resulting in lower global economic growth, depressed agricultural and other commodity prices, raising inequalities, unemployment and significantly slower expansion of worldwide trade in recent years”, the declaration said.

Acknowledging that the majority of WTO Members are developing countries, the declaration said, “We seek to place their needs and interests at the centre of the work in the WTO”.

Should the meeting end without a deal on agriculture, then poor countries – mostly from Africa – will walk out of the discussions empty handed.

On Wednesday, more than 50 nations signed the first major global tariff-cutting deal in almost two decades.