. /.WORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATIONG/AG/NG/W/56
14 November 2000
(00-4835)
Committee on Agriculture
Special SessionOriginal:  English
WTO NEGOTIATIONS ON AGRICULTURE:  DOMESTIC SUPPORT – ADDITIONAL
FLEXIBILITY FOR TRANSITION ECONOMIES
A negotiating proposal by Albania, Bulgaria, Croa tia, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary, the
Kyrgyz Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Mongolia, Slovak Republic and Slovenia
INTRODUCTION
The agricultural sector in the former centrally-planned economies has witnessed sweeping
changes in the past ten years.  Agricultural land has been privatized and/or restituted to former owners.
Agricultural production has shifted from large-scale farming to medium- or small-size family
businesses.  The changes in ownership and production structure have been accompanied by a dramatic
decline in agricultural production.  Most of the investment decisions in the first half of the last decade
were postponed by economic operators due to the uncertainties surrounding ownership withdevastating effect on the state of agricultural assets.  As a result the agricultural sector is badly needing
investment.
At the same time farmers have been plagued by the scarcity of capital: they have been lacking
own resources, in the absence of a well-functioning mortgage system the availability of loans on
commercial terms has been limited, budgetary constraints have stood in the way of adequate
government assistance.  Due to the "capital deficit"  farmers had not only to delay investment decisions
but they have had serious problems in coping even with the financing of production inputs.  This latter
problem has been further aggravated by the often very high level of inflation and the unfavourable
development of the relative prices of agricultural and industrial products.  Another problem which has
taken up significant proportions in recent years is that many of the farmers have accumulated large
debts due to their inexperience in doing business on their own.
The recovery of the agricultural sector is an absolute political and economic priority for these
countries.  In the circumstances described above it is evident that for a transitional period governments
in transition economies have to play a crucial role in assisting farmers in their efforts to  reestablish the
viability of agricultural production.  Leaving farmers fully exposed to the sheer play of market forcesis not an option since this would destroy the agricultural sector.  A key question here is whether the
multilateral disciplines as they currently stand would offer adequate flexibility for agricultural policy-
making, especially if we take into account the prospect of further significant reductions in support as a
result of the ongoing negotiations.
Although at first glance a relatively wide range of blue and green box measures seems to be
available also for these countries, in practice due to the specific circumstances accompanying the
process of economic transformation in most cases they remain beyond reach.  For example due to the
serious decline or in certain cases the collapse of agricultural production, introducing production-
limiting programmes (blue box) or encouraging the retirement of producers or production (green box)
is clearly not an option since it would just lead to the further aggravation of the difficult situation
already experienced in many agricultural production areas.  The use of some of the green boxG/AG/NG/W/56
Page 2
measures such as decoupled income support, income insurance and income safety net programmes
presuppose reasonable and comparable base periods and adequate administrative or private
mechanisms in place which is not the case in most of the transition economies.
The only provision in the present agreement which can be seen as being capable of at least
partially accommodating concerns related to transition is in paragraph 11 of Annex 2 by virtue of
which structural adjustment assistance through investment aids also as part of the reprivatization of
agricultural land qualifies as a green box measure.  However in light of the complexities of the
transition process in agriculture this and some other provisions of the green box, like regional
assistance programmes, will be far from being sufficient.  Neither does the current de minimis
threshold provide us the minimum acceptable level of flexibility.
PROPOSAL
In the light of the above these countries propose to include a specific provision into the
Agreement on Agriculture which would address the particular needs of Members that are in thedifficult process of transformation to a fully-fledged market system or consolidating the results of such
a deep-going economic process in the agricultural sector.
This provision would exempt investment subsidies and input subsidies generally available to
agriculture, interest subsidies to reduce the costs of financing as well as grants to cover debtrepayment from domestic support reduction commitments that would otherwise be applicable to such
measures.  It would also increase the de minimis  threshold applicable to the transition economies.  The
provision could be invoked by individual countries only until the problems in the agricultural sector
described above do persist.
These countries sincerely believe that this proposal is in line with the long-term objective of
the agricultural reform process as it would help us in our efforts to establish and consolidate a market-
oriented domestic agricultural sector by partly alleviating the extreme burdens associated with such a
process and it would allow us to benefit from our comparative advantages.  The proposed way of
addressing the unique challenges that are being faced by transition economies is similar to that already
used in the Subsidies Agreement and it would fit into the Agreement on Agriculture since this
agreement explicitly recognizes the crucial role of certain domestic support measures in economicdevelopment in the form of exempting them from reduction commitments.
__________