March 17, 2007	Saturday	Safar 27, 1428

GENEVA, March 16: The US Farm Bill is "counterproductive" in its current form and could lead to increased subsidies to US cotton formers of up to 65 per cent, African cotton producing nations said here on Friday.

"If the new American law is approved as it stands, it will be counterproductive," Benin's trade minister Moudjaidou Issifou Soumanou told reporters following a meeting with World Trade Organisation director-general Pascal Lamy.

"The proposed reforms will increase cotton subsidies by 60 to 65 per cent."

African cotton producers have lost 30 per cent of their revenues in recent years, due to subsidies in the West, and a decline in the market price of the commodity, Soumanou added.

The African ministers were in Geneva for a two-day meeting with WTO officials and other delegations on the vexed issue of cotton subsidies.

"All countries and all groups unanimously reaffirmed the need to deal with the cotton dossier ambitiously, expeditiously and specifically," Soumanou said.

Lamy agreed that cotton was an issue of "systemic importance for the multilateral trading system."

"It's a reality that African countries producing cotton are increasing their exports, but it's also a reality that the revenues of cotton producers are declining," he told reporters.

This is due to declining world price trends and also trade distortions, such as subsidies and market protection, Lamy added.—AFP