I always wonder why we need to have these meetings if we wont attend as equals. Why should farmers in the developed countries continue get subsidies yet the poor in the developing countries continue to sweat for nothing coz the agreements made doesn’t allow the developing countries to support their farmers. Ukoloni haujaisha…iliisha tu in papers.
[SIZE=6]WTO talks mired in discord as Kenya hosts meet[/SIZE]
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) conference to be held in Nairobi in December is already mired in discord, international agencies are reporting.
Reuters and agencies reported yesterday that the negotiators of the 10th ministerial conference of the WTO that will take place between December 15 and 18 are unable to agree on a work programme from the previous meeting held in Bali, Indonesia.
At issue are US and European Union (EU) proposals to scrap the texts agreed to thus far in this interminable round of trade negotiations…
Among the issues that her ministry will be pushing in the ministerial conference are slashing barriers to cross-border business, which past meetings have failed to resolve. Developing have been lobbying for a bigger market access, especially for their agricultural produce, in the developed nations.
However, input and export subsidies granted to farmers in the richer countries have meant that imports, mostly from emerging countries, are uncompetitive, effectively shutting the markets from external competition.
High production costs in poor nations ranging from expensive energy to taxes have compounded the problem for prospective exports. The conference to be held over four days in December has been dubbed the Nairobi Round, coming two years after the last meeting in Indonesia.
The irony that a country such as India, which witnessed more than a quarter of a million farm suicides between 1996 and 2014, has to fight to retain its farm subsidies, which are a fraction of what the US and the EU provide their farmers, is not lost on most observers.
Nor is US intransigence in refusing to consider a proposal from the group of 33 countries (G-33) to resolve the stockholding issue simply by bringing the WTO agreement into line with 21st century prices. The 2014 US farm bill is one of the main reasons the US government is walking away from the post-Bali agriculture negotiations…
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