G-4 meet

G-4 meet on Thursday sparks hopes of Doha Round revival

Amiti Sen NEW DELHI

COMMERCE & industry minister Kamal Nath will meet his counterparts from Brazil, the US and the EU in Brussels on Thursday in a renewed attempt to put the derailed multilateral trade negotiations of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) back on track. The four groups, popularly known as the G-4, pledged last month in New Delhi to work towards concluding the ongoing Doha Round of talks by the year-end.
The Doha Round, which includes negotiations on liberalising markets for industrial & agricultural goods and services and tightening of rules, is also expected to dominate the annual meeting of the OECD countries in Paris on Wednesday.
At the G-4 meeting here last month, the group declared it was possible to conclude talks by the year-end. The four countries, however, did not come up with details on the extent to which they could bring down the levels of their agriculture subsidies and tariffs on goods. A top official from the commerce department had said after the meeting that it had been informally agreed to finalise the modalities for bringing down tariffs and subsidies by June-end.
The Brussels meeting to be attended by Mr Nath, US trade representative Susan Schwab, EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson and Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim, is important as the four key members need to take substantial steps in furthering the talks if modalities of the negotiations are to be finalised by June-end.
Narrowing down differences in agriculture is the key concern as the Doha talks had broken down in July last year following the inability of members to agree on modalities for agriculture. The primary bone of contention was the US’ refusal to take on commitments in lowering overall trade distorting subsidies in agriculture below the level of $22 billion initially offered by them. Actual subsidies paid by the US is less than $19 billion.
The G-4 meeting is expected to discuss a recent draft paper on agriculture circulated by committee of agriculture chairman Crawford Falconer which has generated a lot of criticism from developing countries including India. While the paper talks about restricting the number of special products (which developing countries can protect against formula tariff cuts) to just 5-7% of the 690 agricultural tariff lines being negotiated, it concludes it would be very difficult to convince the US to bring down its trade-distorting domestic subsidies to the early teens from the current levels of $19 billion.
amiti.sen@timesgroup.com

Kamal Nath