WTO tables poor nations’ bid for trade reforms

The Philippines scored one for the developing countries’ bid to push for more substantial agricultural trade reforms in the forthcoming World Trade Organization (WTO) talks next month in Cancun, Mexico.

Agriculture Assistant Secretary Segfredo Serrano Jr. said the WTO tabled for discussions the developing countries demand that talks should include the maintenance of special products (SPs) and special safeguard measures (SSMs) meant to protect their respective agriculture industries against the onslaught of cheap imported farm produce from richer members of the trade body.

"We will be able to talk substantially about the need to impose these mechanisms, especially when the alliance reads its declaration in Cancun," said Serrano.

Recently, the Philippines, Indonesia and 14 other developing economies formed an alliance to strengthen their call to reverse unfair trade practices that have been keeping poor countries from gaining access to the lucrative market of richer countries of the WTO.

At the same time, the alliance’s immediate agenda is to ensure that developing countries are able to declare certain agricultural products as sensitive and include these in the list of SPs and SSMs.

The preferential treatment on SPs and SSMs, said Serrano, will allow developing countries to impose higher tariffs on these products, thus, giving them the flexibility to better protect their products against foreign competition.

"We have determined these products to be those that are vulnerable to cheap imports and which at the same time, continue to be highly subsidized by developing countries," said Serrano.

The Philippines for one, included sugar, rice and corn in its list of sensitive products.

Last month, Serrano met with his Indonesian counterparts to craft a joint statement and declaration, had it signed by 14 other country delegates that form the bloc, and read it before the 143-member WTO Committee on Agriculture during its meeting last July 18.

The statement, signed by Cuba, Dominican Republic, Honduras, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, Turkey, Uganda,Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and the Philippines — stressed the urgency of ensuring a more level playing field in farm trade among developed and developing countries and for poorer members to get a more equitable deal under WTO rules.

The new bloc scored lopsided global farm trade rules that favor richer countries such as economic giants US and European Union. The US and EU want further trade liberalization but are unwilling to drop subsdidies that give them undue advantage over less affluent nations.

As a result these unfair trade practices undermine developing countries’ ability to support basic development goals like food and livelihood security and rural development.

In their declaration, they supported a section from a draft agreement prepared by WTO agriculture committee chairman 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.

The group stressed in unequivocal terms "that 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."

In the statement, the alliance said their domestic markets "have been deluged by foreign competition that are heavily supported by trade distorting export competition and domestic support measures to the extent that even tariff, their only available instrument of defense and protection, are being dismantled in the guise of free trade."

The new group has a combined population of 1.83 billion people, or close to 30 percent of the 6.21 billion world population.

These countries’ economies are dominated by agriculture and because of global trade distortions, their own markets are in increasing distress and significant portions are destitute.