Hong Kong: Taking forward its dominant status in the multilateral trade negotiation process, India formed a core group on Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA) with eight other developing countries at the sixth ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation here.

Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, the Philippines, Venezuela, Namibia and Egypt are the other members of the group, which in its first communication to John Tsang, chairman of the conference, underscored the need for adhering to certain frameworks on NAMA as listed in the Doha mandate. While India chairs the group, the co-chair is South Africa.

"The principles of less than full reciprocity in reduction commitments by developing countries, and special and differential treatment were agreed to in the Doha mandate and remain central to the negotiations," according to the communication.

The key reason for the emergence of the group is that neither the NAMA chairman's progress report nor the draft ministerial declaration adequately reflects the two submissions made by the developing countries — `flexibilities for developing countries' and `reclaiming development in the WTO Doha Development Round.'

The communication to the WTO, a copy of which was circulated by the Indian officials at the conference, said the developing countries should undertake lesser reduction commitments as compared to the developed countries. Moreover, "the commitments should allow for requisite policy space to enable them to pursue their development strategies. While developing countries are prepared to make a contribution to the NAMA negotiations, we find the developed countries reluctant to offer their fair share."

Noting that the Doha round provides an opportunity to create a more transparent, predictable and inclusive trading system by substantially increasing the level of bindings by all WTO members, the group said though the developed countries were highly competitive in the industrial sector, they continued to maintain high tariff, tariff peaks and tariff escalation on several products. Such products included those in which developing countries were strong in exports.

"The unequivocal removal of these is at the core of the Doha mandate. In addition, there are a large number of non-tariff barriers and abuse of trade remedial measures, which needs to be addressed." Stating that the ambition in NAMA could not be viewed in isolation, the communication said, "it has to be proportional to and commensurate with the contributions by developed countries in other market access areas.

Developing countries cannot be expected to pay for the much needed reforms in the agriculture sectors of developed countries."

"Important development"

The formation of the core group is seen by experts as an important development. According to Milind Murugkar, agri-policy researcher from India, the G-20 helped correction to a "great extent" the imbalance in the agricultural negotiations. However, there was no such movement of NAMA.

The need for such a coalition on NAMA arises especially in the backdrop of E.U's demand for greater market access in the developing countries for its industrial goods in exchange of any market access for agricultural products from the developing countries. The formation of the core group would give these countries a better bargaining power while dealing with Europe on agriculture.

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