Implementation, key to launch of a new WTO round

By C. Rammanohar Reddy

GENEVA, OCT. 19. When the World Trade Organisation can launch the next round of talks on further trade liberalisation depends not so much on the rich countries sorting out their differences over the negotiating agenda as on how and when the major powers address the developing countries' concerns about existing WTO agreements.

Since the collapse last December at the Seattle ministerial conference - where the impasse over the ``implementation issues,'' as the developing countries' concerns are referred to, was one reason for the failure to start a new round - Mr. Mike Moore, Director-General of the WTO, has made progress in this area a cornerstone of his efforts to rebuild ``confidence'' in what appeared a shattered institution. But after months of talks here, patience is wearing thin on all sides - among the developing countries, the U.S., the European Union and the influential Cairns Group of agricultural exporting nations in South America and Australasia - that a resolution is still not in sight.

The developing countries have made over 50 proposals to modify some of the provisions in 15 agreements contained in the broader 1994 pact that was the outcome of seven years of negotiations during the Uruguay Round of the old GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). Concerns that the 1994 deal overly reflected the interests of the rich countries have prompted a diverse group of developing countries to fashion, largely under India's leadership, a body of demands to first alter the existing agreements before proceeding with further liberalisation. Some of the demands are for an extension of the transition periods, as for patent protection periods. Some demands are for specific provisions like a rapider phasing-out of barriers to textile imports into the rich countries and less flexibility to impose anti-dumping duties on developing country exports. And while the poor countries want some demands to be addressed immediately, they want a commitment that the others will be tackled within a specific time period.

However, while both the U.S. and the E.U. insist that they are open to developing country concerns they also state the major proposals can be addressed only within a broader framework of WTO talks, i.e. a larger round of negotiations. One argument is that the entire package negotiated during the Uruguay Round represented ``a balance of rights of obligations'' and it is therefore not possible to change only those provisions of interest to the Third World. There are naturally few takers for this argument among the developing countries which see this as a ruse to get them to the negotiating table. ``If you accept that there was an `imbalance' in the 1994 agreement, where is the question of modifying a `balance' in future negotiations?'' was one poser by a developing country official at the WTO. The other argument of the developed countries, also rejected by the poor countries for being a cover for inaction, is that as many WTO/GATT provisions are already written into national laws by their Parliaments they cannot easily make commitments to rewrite these laws.

For now the focus at the WTO has been on identifying a list of ``doable'' commitments - those issues that can be sorted out immediately - leaving the rest for later. The objective is to produce some results before the next ministerial meeting, scheduled for late 2001, so that an agreement can then be made to begin a new round. However, the developing countries are unhappy with how the Geneva process has been proceeding. ``The U.S. and the E.U. are willing to make general and not specific commitments, which are of no value to us,'' said one delegate from a large developing country. Nobody, neither WTO officials nor delegates from the member-countries, is willing to say when a compromise will be reached, though all agree that without some deal on implementation there will be no new round.

Trade officials from the developing countries acknowledge that outside a larger round of talks, there can at best be an agreement on no more than ``five to ten per cent'' of their demands on implementation. Their complaint is that even this is not on the horizon. Officials from the rich countries privately talk of the developing countries using implementation as an excuse to slow down trade liberalisation and agricultural exporters like Argentina have begun saying the WTO is spending far too much time on implementation and that it is time to move on to other issues. Yet, all agree on one thing. As the ambassador of one developing country put it, ``For perhaps the first time the developing countries have managed to engage the majors in negotiations over a coherent set of proposals, demonstrating to them that their writ does not always run in this institution. Even if we do not go far in implementation, this experience will serve us in good stead in future WTO negotiations. That in itself is a concrete gain from this tussle.''

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