Kenya's Amina Mohammed to push for reduced trade tariffs in upcoming WTO meeting

Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Ambassador Amina Mohammed

Kenya is rooting for discussions to reduce high tariffs that make trade in agriculture expensive during the coming World Trade Organization 10th Ministerial (WTO MC 10) meeting in Nairobi.

Addressing a meeting of African Union Trade Ministers and Africa, Caribbean and Pacific group (ACP) in Brussels last week, Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Ambassador Amina Mohammed said a successful outcome of the WTO (MC10) must include a work programme that is realistic, balanced and that also modernises the WTO negotiating agenda.

The objective of the WTO Nairobi meeting is to reduce distortions in agricultural trade caused by high tariffs and other barriers, export subsidies, and domestic support.

Thus the Ministerial meeting will discuss the Doha Development Agenda (DDA), Agriculture, Market access services among other trade issues with a view of leveraging trade between the Least Developed Countries(LDCs) and the Developed countries.

"The work programme would need to include agriculture, comprising an outcome on cotton; an understanding on food security; services; NAMA; trade and environment; fisheries subsidies; an expanded information technology agreement and a package for LDCs," Ms Amina said.

Most African countries are classified as least developed countries.

Some of the main areas of interest to LDCs include duty-free quota-free market access; the operationalization of the services waiver; simplified rules of origin; and, cotton.

Some of these issues are remnants from the previous WTO Ministerial Conference, held in Bali, Indonesia in 2013 that were not fully addressed.

Much of the focus at the Bali Conference was on public stockholding programmes for food security purposes in developing countries.

Unfortunately, Ms Amina observed that no progress has been made on achieving a permanent solution to this issue.

"Since the Bali Ministerial Conference, 50 Members have ratified the Agreement of Trade Facilitation that was adopted at the Conference. This is still about 50 short of the two-thirds of Membership required for its entry into force," she said.

"Unfortunately, no progress has been made on achieving a permanent solution to this issue."

 

The main concern is that there has been no progress on the core issues of domestic support and market access on agriculture, non-agriculture market access and services since the launch of the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) round of multilateral negotiations in 2001.

WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo outlined the significance of the WTO's forthcoming ministerial conference when he described the state of play in negotiations, the difficulties in advancing the core Doha Development Agenda (DDA) issues, and some of the potential negotiated outcomes which might be achieved in Nairobi.

"Nairobi is the WTO's first ministerial conference to be held in Africa since the organization was created in Marrakesh two decades ago. This underlines the importance of delivering outcomes for development," Roberto WTO Director-General said.

"It seems to me that all members agree that the DDA core issues must remain on the negotiating agenda, such as agriculture, market access, and services."

He added; "I think there is consensus on that. However there is no agreement on how these negotiations should take place: whether under the present Doha framework, or whether under some new architecture."

It is therefore unrealistic to expect a significant outcome on the DDA negotiations in December.

This does not mean the Nairobi Conference will be a complete failure. There are indications that

Members could find agreement on certain elements.

The main elements of such a potential 'package' could include development issues of interest to LDCs; some agreement on export competition in agriculture; and measures to increase transparency in areas such as antidumping, fisheries subsidies and domestic regulation on trade in services.

The meeting was hosted by ACP Secretary-General, Ambassador Patrick Gomes and chaired by Joshua Setipa, Lesotho's Minister of Trade and Industry.

The Director-General was also joined on the panel by CS Amina, who will chair the 10th Ministerial Conference, and Ambassador Marion Williams as the Coordinator of the ACP Group at the WTO.

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