SWITZERLAND: The timeframe for a Doha trade deal slips to next year

Timeframe for Doha round trade deal may be delayed until June 2008. The timeframe for a Doha round trade deal, launched six years ago to boost the world economy and lift millions out of poverty, is slipping into next year and may be delayed until June 2008. According to top officials and trade diplomats at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva, if all goes well an outline deal is likely in January or February next year, a preliminary signing in June or July, and a final deal in 2009. "I don't expect what you call a breakthrough, which would be a major development in the negotiation that would materialize by a sort of formal agreement before the end of this year", WTO's Director General Pascal Lamy told a news conference. The next major step in the negotiations, which had fallen into a stalemate in 2006, is when the chairmen of the key talks on agriculture and industry issue revisions to the compromise texts they had each produced, and which have been bases for intense talks for the past three months. The revised texts in agriculture and industry will provide the outlines of a deal, setting out the formulae that will be used to produce cuts in tariffs and subsidies, and the exceptions to them, known in WTO jargon as modalities. Countries will then go into the final round of negotiations, where the entire package is looked at as a whole and gains in say farming can be traded off against concessions in industry. Many of the demands now being made are seen as tactical positioning for those final "horizontal" negotiations, as countries and groups stake out positions they can trade later. Only a few months ago the hope was this could all be rounded off by Christmas this year. Now Brazil's Amorim says he is hearing a deal is possible in June or July. After the handshakes is when the detailed work starts -- translating the formulae into thousands of tariff lines for industrial and farm goods and agreeing on opening up services. This detailed work will take 9-12 months, trade diplomats said. So if a deal is finally signed, it will be during the next U.S. administration.

ITN Source | November 22, 2007

Tags:. .conference. .known. .positions. .positioning. .launched