RP-led alliance to press for more preferential tariffs at WTO meet

The new alliance of developing countries led by the Philippines will ask for more preferential tariff treatment at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to protect products that are vulnerable to foreign competition.

"We want to secure special tariff treatment by being allowed to self-declare special and strategic products or vulnerable and sensitive products, or those that directly affect food security and other considerations such as rural development," Agriculture Secretary Luis Lorenzo Jr. said.

Lorenzo said the group will also push for the following measures in the WTO talks:

• Retention of special safeguard measures (SSM) but only for developing countries to ensure protection against import surges;

• Provision of balanced mechanism in the form of automatic imposition of additional duty to counter subsidized imports; and

• Inclusion of other agricultural commodities in the category of "vunerable" domestic products.

Lorenzo said developing countries will take a hardline stance to ensure that there will be no further concessions on tariff reduction unless developed countries agree to eliminate their trade-distorting export subsidies and domestic support measures.

The Philippines, Indonesia and 14 other developing countries last week formed a strategic alliance to boost their bid for more substantial agricultural trade reforms in the ongoing talks of the WTO.

The alliance wants to ensure developing countries will be allowed to maintain their special products (SPs) and SSMs meant to protect their respective agriculture industries against the onslaught of cheap imported farm produce from richer members of the trade body.

The other signatories aside from the Philippines and Indonesia are Cuba, Dominican Republic, Honduras, India, Pakistan, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, Turkey, Uganda,Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

The new bloc scored what they described as lopsided global farm trade rules that favor richer countries. As a result these unfair trade practices undermine developing countries’ ability to support basic development goals like food and livelihood security and rural development, they added.

In their declaration, the group supported a section from a draft agreement prepared by WTO agriculture committee chairperson Harbinson giving developing countries a certain leeway in protecting their SPs and allowing them to carry out SSMs and carry out internal adjustments while trade distortions and inaccessible export markets persist.

They said "no agreement in the modalities of the agriculture negotiations can ever be made unless developing countries were allowed to determine and declare for themselves the number of domestically produced products important to their food and livelihood security and rural development, with due consideration of their specific situations."