A new set of negotiating texts are being drawn up at the World Trade Organisation talks in Geneva as a result of the progress made in recent days, but the critical breakthrough is yet to be achieved.
WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy yesterday told WTO members that talks over the past few days have produced "a very high level of convergence on many issues" and these would be included in revised agriculture and industrial products texts to be circulated.
He told an informal meeting of the full WTO membership that he would try to capture as much of the convergence as possible in the revisions, "but obviously issues that still remain to be resolved may be left out at this stage".
Mr Lamy said he and the negotiating-group chairs would take up the other issues urgently at today's talks.
WTO spokesperson Keith Rockwell said members' comments at yesterday's informal Trade Negotiations Committee meeting showed "a degree of intensity".
"I would say many of them were of a testy nature," he said.
The daily informal meetings of the full membership took a break on Sunday 27 July, but members continued their intensive discussions in various forms.
In relation to agriculture, Mr Lamy reported "important progress" overall, with developments including:
* tropical products: broad agreement on the list of products and convergence on how these would be treated with regards to accelerated and deeper tariff cuts;
* preference erosion: broad agreement that the approach will be similar to the one used for industrial products but with some variations, and broad convergence on the list of products;
* least-developed countries: an understanding that the text on this will be identical to that in the non-agricultural market access text;
* sensitive products for developing countries: a number of options to be included in the revised draft so that developing countries have an "array of alternatives" including the ability to designate sensitive products without expanding tariff-rate quotas (developed countries would have to expand the quotas and might not be allowed to designate a product as sensitive unless it already has a tariff-rate quota); and
* the present special safeguard (SSG): developing countries currently eligible to use this type of safeguard would be allowed to keep it for 2.5pc of products (their 'tariff lines') — 5pc for small and vulnerable economies — and only for those products that are currently eligible. (For developed countries the SSG safeguard could be phased out completely. The SSG is not the same as the new special safeguard mechanism — SSM — for developing countries).
Mr Lamy said remaining issues where consultations continue include: cotton; the creation of new tariff-rate quotas (which would determine which products can be called 'sensitive' since these products have to have tariff quotas); and tariff simplification (from more complex forms of tariffs, mainly into percentages of the price).
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