I / St Petersburg July 17, 2006
| The world's top eight industrial nations today appear to have climbed down from a tough position on farm subsidies, reviving hopes of resumption of the collasped WTO talks. "The Doha Round should deliver real cuts in tariffs, effective cuts in subsidies and real new trade flows," a statement issued at the G-8 Summit here said emphasising that, it is "fully committed to the development dimension of ongoing WTO talks." Regretting that the talks in Geneva failed early this month, the heads of government of US, UK, France, Japan, Canada, Italy, Russia and Germany said, "we commit ourselves to substantial improvement for market access in trade in both agriculture and industrial products and expanding opportunities in trade in services." The WTO talks in Geneva collasped after the US stuck to its position and refused to move forward in cutting farm subsidies and desired by developing countries including India. The statement said, "In agriculture we are committed to substantially reducing trade-distorting domestic support and to the parallel elimination by the end of 2013 of all forms of export subsidies a well as establishment of effective disciplines on all export measures with equivalent effect as agreed in Hong Kong. "We urge all parties to work with utmost urgency for conclusion of the round by 2006-end to strengthen multilateral trading system," the statement added. |
