ISLAMABAD, Feb 14: A meeting of senior officials from WTO's 148 member countries started in Geneva on Monday to work out measures to ensure that the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) is concluded by the end of year 2006.
Sources told Dawn on Monday that the officials would deliberate on the progress on July package, market access, negotiations on agreement on agriculture, services sector and rules of the DDA before it would be considered in a ministerial conference to be held in Hong Kong in December.
The meeting has been organized by the United States to ensure a balanced outcome of the upcoming ministerial conference. Pakistan is represented in the meeting by Qasim Niaz, the Joint Secretary and head of the WTO wing at the ministry of commerce.
After the failure of the WTO ministerial conferences - Seattle, 1999, and Cancun, 2003 - the US has arranged this meeting to maximize the opportunities for progress at the upcoming conference.
The DDA was earlier scheduled to be completed by the end of 2004 and would be effective from January 1, 2005; but the member countries failed to develop a consensus on non-agriculture market access, agriculture and services, etc.
According to the agenda of the meeting, a copy of which was made available to Dawn, the participants have been asked to identify those issues which required attention from ministers, senior officials, including in particular development related aspects of these areas.
The officials would deliberate on the principal options for the formula for reduction of tariffs under the non-agriculture market access to bridge differences among the delegations.
The US has suggested a dual co-efficient approach for the formula. The agenda aims to develop draft modalities on the basis of technical work of the last few months for agreement on agriculture, develop formula for tariff reduction in export competition, devise modalities for eliminating export subsidies and develop a formula for reduction in domestic support on agricultural produce.
Under the services sector, the officials have been asked to determine as to what would be the contentious services, how to ensure that services received the same importance along with other areas under the WTO negotiations; are there ways to simplify the negotiations, how to address the developing countries' request for a balanced result on rules and market access in the services negotiations and can offers could be made in the environmental and energy sectors.
Trade facilitation, rules negotiations including dispute settlement, outstanding implementation issues, trade and environment would also be discussed.
