By Bhagirath Lal Das | Delhi, India, 13 Feb 2006 | http://www.twnside.org
Doha opened the door in 2001 for correcting the iniquities and imbalances in the WTO agreements and Hong Kong provided an opportunity in December 2005 to take concrete steps towards this end. But the opportunity has been totally lost. The WTO appears to be set on the usual path of developed countries’ pressure tactics and developing countries’ weak submission.
The irony is that the major players among the developing countries keep on announcing that they have got the best of results. A reality check is necessary to keep us on the right track in the negotiations in future. It is all the more necessary as the developed countries are showing signs of assuming an aggressive approach in the coming months that may be crucial, given that end April 2006 is the target set for working out modalities in agriculture and NAMA (industrial tariff) and end October 2006 for the final schedules of commitments in services.
Developing countries’ own proposals: It is relevant to go back in time a little. With the experience of the operation of the WTO agreements for nearly five years in end 1999, the developing countries prepared a set of nearly one hundred proposals to remedy the imbalances and iniquities in the WTO agreements.
These proposals formed an integral part of the official document for the Seattle Ministerial Conference in December 1999 and came to be known as “implementation issues”. The Doha Ministerial Declaration attached “the utmost importance” to them and yet they were not on the central stage in Hong Kong. They have been mired in technical and procedural squabbles.
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