LAHORE, April 18: The Cairns Group adopted the Lahore Agenda at the conclusion of its 31st Ministerial Meeting on Wednesday with a resolve to devote its efforts to “outreach to urge flexibility on the part of those (countries) with highest level of support and protection (to their farmers) in order to secure the essential elements of a successful conclusion to the Doha Round”.

The Lahore Agenda distributed among reporters at a post-meeting briefing pledged that the group will continue its member countries’ outreach with other groups in negotiations to ensure WTO members understand fully the group’s requirements for the conclusion of the Doha Round.

The document said the group members will instruct to continue in earnest the Cairns Group Work Programme launched in Cairns, Australia, last September. “The Work Programme should continue to concentrate to lay out strong and workable ideas for the architecture of a deal in all three pillars,” that is, market access, domestic support and export competition.

“Positions should be developed in a manner that is most likely to achieve broad consensus, consistent with the group’s priorities and the mandate. Consultation and outreach with other members and negotiating groups will be essential,” the document said.

On market access, the ministers expressed satisfaction over the good progress in articulating the group’s priorities in market access, including through tabling proposals on Sensitive Products and Tropical and Alternative Products.

“We will continue to build outreach efforts on these proposals and instruct our officials to work towards convergence in the group on other important issues, such as special products, the special safeguard mechanism as well as other issues in the market access pillar.”

Regarding domestic support, the ministers instructed their officials to find convergence on meaningful disciplines on all trade distorting support, including product specific caps, particularly as they pertain to cotton, as well as to examine other means to ensure the effectiveness of disciplines in this pillar.

Similarly, the group seeks practical and effective means to improve monitoring and surveillance of domestic support commitments through fully transparent, complete and timely notifications, enabling accurate and comprehensive evaluation and review of the members’ domestic support spending.

It was further resolved to continue work on monitoring and analysis of domestic support reforms through the US Farm Bill and through scheduled reforms of the CAP in the EU, and to use all available opportunities to advocate the group’s interests in these reforms.

On export competition, the ministers pledged to give effect to the group’s interests in strong rules to ensure the elimination of all forms of export subsidies, in line with the Hong Kong Declaration. They asked the officials concerned to give priority to finalise positions on export credits, guarantees and insurance as well as food aid, having regard to the texts issued by the chair on these issues.