GENEVA, Tuesday
Negotiators
holding marathon talks in Geneva have failed to produce a deal to put
on the table at a crunch summit next week, World Trade Organisation
chief Roberto Azevedo said Tuesday.
“The reality is
that we have proved that we can’t cross the final yard here in Geneva.
The process here is over,” Mr Azevedo said.
“This is
not about shortness of time. If we had a few more weeks, we would still
not make it,” he said. “If we are to get this deal over the line, we
will need political engagement and political will,” he added.
Earlier
today, the WTO’s 159 member economies had held a crunch meeting to
decide whether they had made sufficient headway to put a formal draft
document before trade ministers at WTO’s December 3-6 summit on the
Indonesian island of Bali.
They pored over a 53-page
draft accord which still contained an array of negotiating options that
needed honing down, drawn up after last-ditch, round the clock talks.
GLOBAL COMMERCE
Negotiators
from WTO’s member economies have spent weeks scrambling to bridge
bitter differences and try to revive talks on an accord to ease barriers
to global commerce.
Mr Azevedo, the Brazilian former
trade envoy who was sworn-in as WTO director general in September, has
warned that negotiations must not be left until the Bali summit.
Bali
is seen as perhaps the last chance to revive the WTO’s so-called “Doha
Round” of talks, launched in 2001 at a summit in Qatar.
The
round’s goal is to produce a wide-ranging global accord on opening
markets and removing trade barriers, with a key goal being to harness
international commerce to develop poorer economies.
By some estimates, Mr Azevedo noted, a final deal could provide a $1 trillion (about Sh85 trillion) boost to global commerce.
But the talks have stalled as rich countries, emerging powers and the world’s poorest nations spar over the concessions needed.
Mr Azevedo, however, cautioned that the splits were more complex. “There is not a north-south divide,” he said.
Negotiators
had long ruled out the chances of Bali reviving the Doha Round, and
instead tried to draw up lower-level thematic accords for the summit,
which could be fed into a wider package later.
One
covers “trade facilitation”, which involves simplifying customs
procedures in an effort to make commerce smoother, and where divisions
centre on the time-lag developing countries would get to fall into line,
plus the support they would get from donors to do so.
Another
division is over “food security”, pushed by India, under which
developing countries want to be allowed to subsidise grain stockpiling
to help low-income farmers and consumers — stocks that critics warn
could end up on the open market, skewing trade.
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