ISLAMABAD, Sept 13: John Chun Wah Tsang, Minister for Commerce, Industry and Technology of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, has expressed the hope that a breakthrough would be made in the stalled WTO negotiations process, particularly in agriculture, at the ministerial conference to be held in Hong Kong in December this year.

“The Hong Kong ministerial conference will be held at a critical stage of the game. In Hong Kong, we hope that we will be giving a milestone along the way towards the conclusion of the Doha Round expected by everyone concerned some time in 2006,” he told Dawn in an exclusive interview at the concluding session of the G-20 ministerial conference held recently.

Mr Tsang, nominated to chair the HK conference, said that the Hong Kong discussion was going to be “very very important”.

“So far as the negotiations go, we have missed the July 2004 framework approximations. We need to double our efforts between now and the end of the year,” he added.

“We have new director-general of the WTO who started working earlier this month and would be striving to bring people to some form of consensus before the end of the year and conclude this round at Hong Kong.”

When asked if the Hong Kong ministerial conference could turn out to be another Seattle or Cancun, he said: “As a politician, I have to be optimistic. Had I not been optimistic, I would have thrown in the towel long ago.”

Regarding Pakistan’s formula for Non-Agriculture Market Access (NAMA), the minister said that Pakistan’s proposal had been very helpful. “Yes, as chair of the (upcoming) ministerial conference we welcome the proposal. This (Pakistani proposal) is a sort of middle ground proposal that could bring the extreme positions together. This is a good strong leadership.”

Asked how much flexibility he expected developed countries will show in their keenness to move the process ahead, he said “the political imperative” was supposed to conclude a round in 2006 because beyond this the legal frameworks of some countries, such as United States’ trade promotion authority act would expire and without that they would not be able to negotiate.

The act granted the US president a “fast track authority” to conclude trade negotiations with other countries. Once the act expires, the authority to approve or reject trade treaties would revert to the US Congress.

“We have seen that extreme position would not be acceptable to lot of people. The position adopted by the G-20 would give a positive momentum to the Doha negotiations.”

Mr Tsang said that 2006 would be sort of a deadline for everybody, beyond which it would become difficult to continue the negotiation process. “It is a window of opportunity at this point, so we need to do our best to try to conclude the round this time.”

The minister pointed out that the G-20 had been able to come up with some middle position regarding agriculture as against many extreme position adopted by other countries.

“There are very powerful statements coming from big nations in the G-20, which will put a lot of pressure on the rest of the world to comply. This is the sort of leadership we need in the run-up to the final phase of these negotiations. That is why we are very glad that the G-20 has provided this kind of leadership at this crucial time,” Mr Tsang observed.

When asked about the US position which confined market access to the financial services sector, the minister said the issue was “part of the negotiations”.

“There is going to be a lot of give and take. Different sides are going to try to balance it individually. We need to work on the United States and other developed countries to come up with good proposals that are useful for developing countries,” he said.

“We need to have a balance between NAMA and services and agriculture. It is not just a political kind of balance, we need to look at horizontal balance too,” the minister added.