WTO | 2010 News items - Chair urges agriculture negotiators to send in essential data

He was speaking in the last meeting of the agriculture negotiations before the summer break (August to mid-September). He said that before the pause he would tell members about his plans for the period after it.

The meeting marked the end of a year of work on data and “templates” — blank tables or forms for governments to use to list their final commitments and the accompanying data. Members now have “road-maps” for how to take these technical tasks into a second and final step in all three “pillars” of the farm talks — market access, domestic support, and export subsidies and related issues.

Amb.Walker also reported on his consultations with some members on two areas of substance: the special safeguard mechanism (SSM) that will allow developing countries to raise import duties temporarily to deal with import surges or price falls; and tariff simplification.

And a handful of delegations used this meeting, which lasted less than an hour, to raise or repeat some of their concerns, including some countries’ view that the present focus on data and templates should not be allowed to delay work on the talks’ substance.

Earlier, on Tuesday 6 July 2010, a paper from the G-20 group of developing countries sparked a debate about whether negotiators should try to create templates (ie, the blank forms or tables for presenting commitments or data) for members’ commitments in all areas of the farm talks, or whether some parts of the templates are linked so closely to the substance that the substance should be settled before designing the templates.

These countries were also concerned that the focus on the templates could delay work on substance.

Some other countries objected, arguing that work on all the templates should go ahead first (“front loading the templates”) to save time when the substance of the “modalities” is eventually agreed.

Meanwhile, negotiators are starting to move from the first step of identifying the data needed, to the second step of designing templates, at least in some areas. In the 6 July 2010 meeting, Canada and Australia presented “road-maps” as suggestions for how to move ahead and eventually create the templates in domestic support and export subsidies, for agriculture as a whole and for cotton. This followed a presentation by the EU in May on a “road-map” for the third “pillar”, market access.

The meeting ended with farewells for a number of agriculture negotiators who have been based in Geneva but are soon returning to their capitals.

Ambassador Walker also wished the EU well in resolving a forthcoming “internal conflict”. In response, delegates from Spain, wearing Spanish team shirts, and from the Netherlands, with orange identity-badge bands, asked to pose for a photo with the chairperson as their attention turned to the soccer World Cup final in two days’ time.

Audio

Use these links to download the audio files or to listen to what he said:

The chair's statements:

Explanations

This meeting

This was an informal agriculture negotiations meeting of the full membership, officially an “Informal Open-Ended Special Session” of the Agriculture Committee.

The latest texts and a number of related issues can be found with explanations here, including what “the text” is and says, and a “jargon buster”.

The current phase of the negotiations is about “modalities”, explained here.

Outstanding issues

Chairperson David Walker describes the issues he is currently dealing with as topics that are “bracketed and otherwise annotated” in the 2008 documents. He listed these issues and his assessments in his 22 March 2010 report to the Trade Negotiations Committee.

From templates and data, to commitments

Templates: Here, these are blank forms prepared for the “schedules” (lists or tables) of commitments, and for data used to calculate the commitments. Some of the data will be in “supporting tables” attached to the schedules of commitments.

Part of the technical work is on organizing the data. Electronic forms or tables will be used to present base data — data to be used as the starting point for calculating commitments — in a way that is transparent and verifiable. Eventually they will be used to design “templates” for how the commitments will be presented.

Among the data needed are domestic consumption, for calculating the tariff quotas on sensitive products, and values of production for calculating domestic support commitments.

The technical work follows the draft “modalities” text of December 2008 and takes negotiators through the following sequence:

1. Members identify data needs and design blank forms (“templates”) for data and for commitments.

This is in two steps:

Step 1: considering what “base data” are needed under the present draft “modalities” — what is already available, what will need to be “constructed”, and whether the draft “modalities” says how this should be done. This step also includes the question of whether supporting tables — tables displaying the data and how they are derived — are needed and what their format would be.
Step 2: developed from step 1, designing “templates” or blank forms to be used for the commitments resulting from the Doha Round negotiations, and for any supporting data required. Parts of the data could be presented before, during or after “modalities” have been agreed.

(Chairperson Walker has also referred to an eventual step 3: filling in the numbers.)

2. “Modalities” (formulas, flexibilities, disciplines) agreed, perhaps with agreed blank forms or tables, and with some data attached.

3. “Scheduling” — forms/tables filled in. Some are draft commitments, based on “modalities” formulas. Some are supporting tables of data.

4. Members verify each others’ draft commitments, using the supporting data.

5. Commitments are agreed as part of the Doha Round single undertaking.

This work is technical, but some political questions also still have to be sorted out before “modalities” can be agreed.

JARGON BUSTER

About negotiating texts:

• bracketed: in official drafts, square brackets indicate text that has not been agreed and is still under discussion

• templates: blank forms or tables for presenting commitments or data

• modalities: the way to proceed. In WTO negotiations, modalities set broad outlines — such as formulas or approaches for tariff and subsidy reductions — for final commitments

• schedules: in general, a WTO member’s list of commitments on market access (bound tariff rates, access to services markets). Goods schedules can include commitments on agricultural subsidies and domestic support. Services commitments include bindings on national treatment

• “Job document”: unofficial document given a number beginning with “JOB”. Up to 2009, the number identifies the year, for example JOB(09)/99. From 2010 it identifies the subject, eg, JOB/AG/1. Because “job” documents are unofficial, they are usually restricted

Issues:

• The three pillars: the main areas covered by the agriculture negotiations — export competition (export subsidies and related issues), domestic support and market access

• boxes: categories of domestic support

• Amber Box: domestic support considered to distort production and trade, eg, by supporting prices or being directly related to production quantities, and therefore subject to reduction commitments. Officially, “aggregate measurement of support” (AMS)

• de minimis: Amber Box supports in small, minimal or negligible permitted amounts (currently limited to 5% of the value of production in developed countries, 10% in developing). To simplify this guide to the “modalities”, de minimis is treated separately from the Amber box

• Blue Box: Amber Box types of support, but with constraints on production or other conditions designed to reduce the distortion. Currently not limited

• Green Box: domestic supports considered not to support trade or to cause minimal distortion and therefore permitted with no limits

• distortion: when prices are higher or lower than normal, and when quantities produced, bought, and sold are also higher or lower than normal — ie, than the levels that would usually exist in a competitive market

• sensitive products (available for all countries): would have smaller tariff cuts than from the formula, but with quotas allowing imports at lower tariffs (“tariff quotas”) to provide some access to the market

• tariff quota: when quantities inside a quota are charged lower import duty rates, than those outside (which can be high). (The reductions from the formulas apply to out-of-quota tariffs)

• tariff line: a product as defined in lists of tariff rates. Products can be sub-divided, the level of detail reflected in the number of digits in the Harmonized System (HS) code use to identify the product

• special products (SP): products for which developing countries are to be given extra flexibility in market access for food and livelihood security and rural development

• special safeguard mechanism (SSM): a tool that will allow developing countries to raise tariffs temporarily to deal with import surges or price falls (explained here)

• pro-rating: a proposal, to adapt the calculation for triggering the SSM safeguard so that it takes into account the effect of an SSM in an earlier period. Imports in an earlier period when a safeguard was being used might be lower than the general trend. Therefore the earlier safeguard might exaggerate an import surge in a subsequent year, triggering the use of the safeguard again

• export competition: term used in these negotiations to cover export subsidies and the “parallel” issues, which could provide loopholes for governments’ export subsidies — export finance (credit, guarantees and insurance), exporting state trading enterprises, and international food aid

> More jargon: glossary
> More explanations

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