Only progress: Duty-free access plan; draft today

On the third day of the WTO ministerial, there was visible progress only on the issue of duty-free and quota-free access to least developed countries as part of the development package.

With the green room meetings continuing throughout the day today, the first draft of the revised ministerial text is expected to be out by Friday. Member countries will tonight discuss agriculture and non-agriculture market access.

"There has now been near convergence that the duty-free, quota-free policy will cover all countries but not all products," a negotiator told Business Standard adding that countries like the US could be allowed to use the words "nearly all products". There was also a near agreement on the market access to LDCs not been "binding".

The word "binding" is likely to be replaced by "lasting basis" in the text. In order to encourage more developing countries to provide duty-free and quota-free access, appropriate flexibilities would be extended to them in terms of giving more time to extend the duty-free and quota-free access to certain products.

Similarly, on the non-agricultural market access, there is now near unanimity that the tariff reduction will be based on a simple Swiss formula. Officials, however, said India would not relent on the Argentina, Brazil and India (ABI) formula unless other members agreed to treat flexibilities under Para 8 as a stand-alone provision and recognise special products and special safeguard mechanism in agriculture.

While the US said it backs 2010 as the end date for the elimination of export sops, a negotiator said that it could be a while before this was included as the EU had not yet supported of the same.

The EU maintained that there has to be movement in areas like food aid, export credit and state trading enterprises before agreement to an end date is reached.