The Hindu Business Line : Playing ball in Doha

The Doha Round can be effectively concluded only if there is the political will to do so. The drafts are technical documents that can go up to a point and no further.

The revised drafts on agriculture and non-agriculture market access (NAMA) have just been released and it is safe to say that they do not mark any substantial progress compared with the documents released this February. The principal players involved in the negotiations have made no special effort to travel that extra mile which could have resulted in an accord being formalised at the Ministerial meeting likely to be held soon. On the contrary, following the release of the new drafts, both the developed and developing world have once again reiterated their established positions, in the process reducing the chances for the documents to be the basis of an agreement.

The agriculture draft, as the chairman of the negotiating committee in Geneva, Mr Crawford Falconer of New Zealand, has said, does not contain any surprises and is one which merely clarifies issues, gets rid of the undergrowth, simplifies things, and has acted as a filter to the discussions which have taken place over the past three months. On the NAMA draft, the chairman of the negotiating group concerned, Mr Don Stephenson of Canada, has said that there are increased flexibilities proposed for the developing countries and the new draft provides a lot of room for the members to negotiate compared to the February document, “if that is what members wish to do finally”. He has also said that there is a “near consensus” on the “architecture” with respect to the numbers, thereby generating some hope about the new draft being accepted a bit more widely than the previous ones. However, the immediate response of the main players has been one of criticism, with the US, in particular, challenging the “largest and fastest growing economies” (read India, China, Brazil, among others) to increase the level of “liberalisation”. Not surprisingly, New Delhi has given notice that it is going to oppose, as previously, certain stipulations in the two drafts, specially the “effort” being made by the industrialised countries to divide the developing-countries bloc.

As has been clear for some years, the Doha Round can be effectively concluded only if there is the political will to do so. The drafts are technical documents that can go up to a point and no further, from where the politicians must take over. The problem is that the politicians are not playing ball, especially those who are still hesitating to acknowledge the fact that the world economic order has changed, with yesterday’s underdogs having already moved into the co-pilot’s seat.

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