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WTO issues revised proposals on agriculture, NAMA negotiations
2008-02-10
Xinhua
The World Trade Organization (WTO) on Friday released new compromise proposals on agricultural and NAMA (non-agricultural market access) negotiations aimed at promoting a successful conclusion of the Doha Round this year.
The two documents, on agriculture and NAMA respectively, contain new figures on subsidy and tariff cuts, an indication that WTO members remain divided despite intensive talks in the past few months.
The revised agricultural trade proposals, released by Crawford Falconer, the WTO's chief farm trade negotiator, suggest that the United States reduce its agricultural subsidies to between $13 billion and $16.4 billion.
The revised NAMA proposals, released by Don Stephenson, the WTO 's chief negotiator on NAMA, keep unchanged the figure on industrial tariff cuts by major developing countries.
Falconer, however, said the new document on agriculture incorporated the results of intensive negotiations on a range of technical issues over the past few months, though he conceded that "no great surprises" could be found in the new document and that thorny issues had to be left to a possible WTO ministerial meeting in April.
Falconer and Stephenson first released their draft proposals in July.
They suggested that the new proposals issued on Friday are also open to further revisions, depending on further negotiations among the WTO's 151 members.
The Doha Round of global trade negotiations was launched in 2001 with an aim to bring down trade barriers to promote development. The talks have been stalled due to major differences on agriculture and NAMA.
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