ISLAMABAD, Feb 8: World Trade Organization (WTO) Director General Pascal Lamy has urged the negotiators to intensify contacts with other delegations to move the process forward for early conclusion of the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) by the end of the current year.

The DG in his first comments after the Hong Kong ministerial conference to the Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) urged the members for making progress in the negotiations. He said the general council was to review the progress and take any appropriate action no later than July 31, 2006.

Mr Lamy announced the establishment of the Aid for Trade Task Force which would start consulting on appropriate mechanisms to increase financial resources for aid for trade.

“I intend to ensure that we make solid progress in this work, which I expect to continue through the year at different levels, so that the aid for trade programme becomes operational this year. I will keep you informed of progress in all these areas,” he added.

The WTO director general said: “If you are to reach the agreement on schedule, it is essential for you to intensify your contacts with other delegations and with your capitals, to move us towards the elements we will need to conclude this round at the end of the year.”

In particular, it is now urgently necessary to move to negotiating elements of texts and to flesh out discussions on generally applicable provisions and formulae with bilateral consideration of concrete and specific trade effects.

He said obviously, agriculture (in particular market access and domestic support) and NAMA remained the flagships of the convoy, but no one was in any doubt that “our convoy is a large one”. These two issues have an important role in leading the convoy to the port, but “we all know that the convoy must arrive together, this is the very essence of our common principle of the single undertaking”.

“In the bodies under the TNC alone, we are working on 10 separate areas beyond agriculture (including cotton) and NAMA, including services, where the Hong Kong declaration opened the door for multilateral negotiations which will be to a great extent demand driven. For the negotiations to achieve real progress over the next weeks, the request/offer negotiations must be intensified,” he concluded.