ISLAMABAD, Nov 26: The World Trade Organization (WTO) on Saturday released a nine-page Draft Ministerial Text with annexes aiming to agree on formulas and other details that will determine the scale of reductions in tariffs on thousands of products and on farm subsidies.

The draft was released 16 days ahead of the Hong Kong ministerial conference to be held on December 13. The conference will be vital for enabling the four-year-old Doha Development Agenda (DDA) negotiations move forward to conclude the round in 2006.

The immediate response from commerce ministry officials on the draft was not available. They said that they would go through the draft text thoroughly before making any comments.

International coordinator, Trade Justice Campaign, ActionAid International, Aftab Alam Khan, commenting on the draft told Dawn that rich countries had dug their heels in. “This is still a miserable draft for world’s poor farmers, and on top of that it threatens developing world’s industries,” he added.

He said for instance more than 10 million African cotton farmers would only get more promises, instead of concrete measures to save their livelihoods. To show their dissatisfaction over the process, African cotton farmers would be gathering in Nairobi on Dec 7-8, a few days before the Hong Kong ministerial conference, he added.

“On industrial goods and services, the draft text is still biased towards the interests of rich countries. This will force opening up of markets in developing countries, driving hundreds of thousands of poor deeper into poverty,” he remarked.

“Unlike agriculture and NAMA, the text from the chair (Ambassador Fernando de Mateo of Mexico) of the services committee (attached in draft as annex C) appears as if it is based on members’ submissions, but actually it is not.”

The poor people in Pakistan will be badly affected if critical services sectors, such as education and health, are further privatized for multinational corporations. The current text would limit government’s control over such corporations that put profit before people.

“Rich nations must drop this push and go much further to cut farm subsidies. Unless they do, developing countries should reject any deal at the WTO,” Mr Khan remarked.

The main task before countries in the Hong Kong moot is to settle a range of questions that will shape the final agreement of the DDA.

Launched at the fourth ministerial conference in November 2001, the Doha Development Agenda includes negotiations on a range of subjects and work on issues related to the implementation of agreements arising from the previous negotiations.