Last December a package of measures was agreed at the Tenth Ministerial Conference of the WTO in Nairobi; trade negotiators in Geneva are still trying to make sense of how markets will be affected by the measures pertaining to agriculture. The deal saw WTO members make progress on a number of long-standing questions on the global farm trade agenda—although many others remain to be resolved.
Eliminating export subsidies
Progress on agricultural export subsidies and other export competition measures with similar effects was one of the main outcomes from the ministerial. These types of policy instruments have long been blamed for harming farmers by artificially suppressing farm prices on global markets, with ministers first vowing to eliminate them over an eight-year period when they met at the Sixth WTO Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong in 2005.
While the Nairobi package commits developed countries to end immediately all export subsidies, developing countries would have to phase out their use of export subsidies by the end of 2018, with an extra five years for certain export subsidies covering transport and marketing costs.
To read the full evaluation of the Nairobi package, please click here.
Source: ictsd.org
