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Not
such special treatment
Shishir Priyadarshi,
Consultant, South Centre
The southern countries are not satisfied
with the special and differential treatment awarded to them in
agricultural questions and would like to renegotiate the question
thoroughly. Starting by setting out the objectives assigned to
such treatment in order to make it a true tool for agricultural
development.
number of developing countries have already submitted a proposal
on Special and Differential treatment in the AoA (G/AG/ NG/W/15).
As elaborated in that proposal the concept of Special and Differential
Treatment (S&D) is a fundamental building block of the multilateral
trading system. It was conceived in acknowledgement of the fact
that developing countries are at very different stages of economic,
financial and technological development and therefore have very
different capacities as compared to developed countries in taking
on multilateral commitments and obligations. It had therefore
been accepted that special advantages and flexibility must given
to developing countries so that they could adopt appropriate national
policies to support their trade regimes. In essence therefore
special and differential treatment provisions are to be looked
at not as exceptions to the general rules but more importantly
as an integral and inherent objective of the multilateral trading
system.
S&D provisions are therefore crucial for developing
countries and real, effective, and operational S&D provisions
in agriculture are perhaps even more critical, firstly because
of the special place that the agriculture sector has in most developing
countries’ economies and secondly because of food security issues
which go beyond the mere feeding of large populations, itself
a gigantic task, being also integrally linked to broader security
issues.
However, the experience of implementing the
Agreement on Agriculture has shown that, like most other Uruguay
Round agreements, the AoA too provided developing countries with
only ineffectual, notional and at most what could be termed as
best endeavour special and differential provisions. These provisions
of the AoA, therefore failed to even remotely achieve their objectives
in terms in terms of integrating developing countries into the
multilateral trading system and improving their trading conditions.
The reasons for these shortcomings are not
far to seek. S&D provisions in the AoA either only recognised
the interests of developing countries in very general terms; or
merely provided for a longer time frame for implementation; or
at best provided for some notional technical and financial assistance.
Unfortunately, these S&D provisions did not reflect the stark
reality that market liberalisation, even over longer transition
periods, would not be able to provide a solution to the problems
that developing countries face. A fundamental difference which
is constantly overlooked is the fact that developed and developing
countries are face with diametrically opposite scenarios. While
the situation in the former is characterised by large surpluses,
fewer numbers, better productivity, huge resources, the latter
are faced with subsistence level production, ever increasing numbers
dependent on this sector, low productivity, severely constrained
resources, a very low ‘supply response’ and inability to switch
between crops and enterprises, at the dictate of market forces.
Hence, it would be extremely important to ensure that the discussions
on S&D provisions first recognise/accept the very different kind
of agriculture practised in developing countries and then convert
the possible ways and means of addressing these inherent deficiencies
into specific goal-oriented and legally enforceable S&D provisions.
Consequently one of the major shortcomings
in the existing S&D provisions in the AoA has been the singular
focus on what finally emerged as weak instruments in the agreement,
that is on the provisions per se, rather than on the basic objectives
for the attainment of which these S&D instruments had been in-built
into the Agreement. It would therefore be appropriate to begin
the consideration of this very important issue for developing
countries by an identification and collation of some of the specific
objectives and long term goals which S&D provisions in agriculture
should necessarily fulfil.
Handling food insecurity
In this context it needs to be stressed that most of the world’s
food-insecure people are rural based and rely on farm and non-farm
employment for earning their livelihood. As a result economic
access, for this poor and food-insecure section of the population
in developing countries, can only be assured if they can produce
the food themselves or have economic means of purchasing this
food, which in the current state of their economies can only come
from increased food and agricultural production. These countries
would need adequate flexibility within the rules to enhance the
capacity to fully develop their agriculture sector. Inter alia,
therefore, S&D provisions in the AoA must be geared towards fulfilling
the following objectives:
1. Reducing the number of under-nourished
people in developing countries –regrettably, the total number
of under-nourished and food-insecure people in developing countries
is today as high as nearly 800 million. Reducing this number by
providing improved access to assured food has to be one of the
most fundamental objectives around which S&D provisions in the
AoA must be built;
2. Alleviation of rural poverty –A very large
percentage of the rural population who are directly involved in
agricultural activities often subsist below the poverty level.
This segment of the population in developing countries is usually
the most vulnerable, and specific steps therefore need to be taken
to improve their income levels;
3. Enhancing production for domestic consumption–
productivity levels in most developing countries are abysmally
low. As a result, even with large arable areas, these countries
are unable to produce sufficient food to meet even a small percentage
of their domestic requirement. Dependency upon food aid has only
exacerbated the problem. S&D provisions must therefore provide
sufficient flexibility to developing countries to be able to improve
productivity and enhance domestic production;
4. Improvement in the existing market access
opportunities –in spite of the general statements made by most
developed countries at the time of the Uruguay round recognising
the need to improve market access conditions for products of interest
to developing countries, very little has been done/achieved in
this regard. It is important to ensure that they raise their share
of agricultural exports, which has stagnated at around thirty
percent of world agricultural trade for a long time1. Consequently,
S&D provisions must provide for improved market access of products
of interest to developing countries, especially the least developed
amongst them;
5. Preservation of rural employment –In no
developed country is such a large percentage of the population
dependent upon one single sector for its livelihood. It is simply
not possible to find alternative employment for even a small percentage
of this population and, therefore, the preservation of rural agricultural
employment opportunities has to be another central objective of
the S&D provisions;
6. Creating a level playing field –one of
the greatest anomalies of the Agreement on Agriculture has been
the lack of a level and fair playing field for developing countries.
Not only should such iniquitous provisions of the agreement be
eliminated but real and meaningful special differential treatment
provided so that distortions in global agricultural trade are
minimised;
7. Strengthening supply-side capability –Many
of the developing countries need urgent assistance to strengthen
their supply-side capability to be able to develop a competitive
capacity at the national level. Developing countries must be allowed
the flexibility to employ policy measures and support, targeted
at the specific problems of their rural and resource poor farmers.
S&D provisions must reflect this flexibility.
These basic objectives must not only be accepted
as the fundamental goals which the agricultural negotiations must
strive to achieve, but should also therefore be inscribed in the
modalities of the negotiations and all discussions on the specific
S&D provisions to be built into the AoA must be held in the context
of these basic principles.
In this context it also needs to be emphasised
that as brought out in the ASEAN proposal on S&D treatment, the
sheer underdevelopment of agriculture in developing countries
limits their ability to undertake commitments. The Agreement must
therefore provide these countries appropriate and adequate flexibility,
not just in terms of longer time frames for implementation, but
also in terms of the nature, depth and substance of the commitments
which they are finally required to undertake.
[1] In fact the share of developing
country exports in total world agricultural exports declined from
40% in 1961 to 27% in 1990. Africa’s loss in share has been particularly
striking, decreasing from 8.6% in 1961 to 3.0% in 1996.
| Founded
in 1995, South Center is an intergovernmental organisation
with 46 developing country members. It produces publications
for the Group of 77 and the Non-Aligned Movement and has undertaken
a project to monitor the work of the WTO and its implications
for the economies of developing countries. |
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