WORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATIONG/AG/NG/W/121
10 May 2001
(01-2407)
Committee on Agriculture
Special SessionOriginal:  English
FIFTH SPECIAL SESSION OF THE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE
5-7 FEBRUARY 2001
Statement by Pakistan
G/AG/NG/W/90  (Proposal by the EC)
Pakistan welcomes the European Communities negotiating proposal on agriculture as a good
contribution.  Though it falls way short of what we would have expected, it reflects the European
Communities' commitment and resolve to engage in the negotiations.
Pakistan has the following observation to make on the European Communities Proposal:
a) On Market Access, the European Communities proposal does not address the problems which
tariff peaks, in developed countries, pose, especially to the products of export interest to developing
countries.
The proposal also does not even touch upon the issue of tariff escalations, a trade policy
instrument which effectively stifles any diversification endeavours of developing countries in the
agriculture sector.  The tariff escalations are a major barrier/impediment to developing countries in
their:
- pursuit to attain developmental objectives in agriculture;
- attempts to diversify;
- efforts to escape from the vicious circle of producing and exporting primary
commodities.
As trade in agricultural products is rapidly shifting towards value added processed products,
therefore, tariff escalations are becoming an increasingly serious problem for the developing
countries.  The OECD countries are the main exporters of high value processed food products
accounting for 70% of the global exports in this category.  For the developing countries the growing
share in agricultural exports is of the products at the primary processing stage.  Ironically the
processed products which the OECD countries export also include tropical beverages and spiceswhich are based on commodities primarily produced in the developing countries, therefore, the value
added by processing currently, to a large extent, accrues to the developed countries.  The Agreement
on Agriculture, therefore, suffers from an acute developmental deficit which needs to be adequately
rectified by the elimination of tariff escalations.
Pakistan agrees that disciplines on Tariff Rate Quotas be clearly defined to simplify their
administration so as to inject uniformity and transparency.  But a mere clarification of the rules on
TRQ management as suggested by the EC would not be sufficient to address the problems faced by
developing countries in trying to obtain market access.  Pakistan, along with a group of developing
countries, has already tabled a proposal which seeks:G/AG/NG/W/121
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- substantial reductions in in-quota and especially out-of-quota tariffs;
- step/periodic increase in the tariff quota volumes administered in the developed
countries;
- MFN allocation of tariff quotas;
- basing tariff quotas on specific products rather than aggregate groups.
The problems of new and small agricultural suppliers from developing countries must be
adequately addressed in any proposal relating to TRQ administration.
The EC proposes continuation of the special sa feguard mechanism.  Needless to say that most
developing countries are presently not permitted to use these provisions which have given rise to an
anomalous situation.  In the case of availability of this mechanism to those few who already maintainhigh levels of protection and its non-availability to those which have a fairly liberalized regime,
despite their weaker economic situation, reflects an i nherent inequity in the existing rules.  It is,
therefore, that Pakistan advocates elimination of SSG for the developed countries.
In our view Special Safeguard should be made available only as a Special and Differential
provision to developing countries which presently face, and would continue to do so, maximum
pressure arising out of liberalization, opening up of their domestic markets and dumping of highly
subsidized imports.  The developed countries should not be entitled to use this instrument.
b) Pakistan also welcomes European Commission's suggestion for a more level playing field in
the area of export competition.  But one fails to understand the EC's reluctance to work, positively,towards achieving the same level playing field in two other pillars of agricultural negotiations i.e.
market access and domestic support.  We wish EC could be forthcoming to inject this idea of level
playing field in other aspects of negotiation on agriculture.  Even, as it is, the EC suggestion fails to
achieve this objective by linking export subsidies with other forms of export assistance.  The fact
remains that export subsidies continue to be the single most trade distorting factor in world agriculturetrade.
We have reservation on the EC's proposal on integrating the work carried out on export
credits in other international fora into the WTO.  While the OECD has not been mentioned by name,
it is evident that the EC would like the work done  in the OECD, of which a sizeable majority of
developing countries are not members, to be adopted by the WTO.
We acknowledge the EC's concern that local food production should not be damaged.  But it
is pertinent to point out that most of the policies which the EC pursues under domestic support and
export subsidization programmes have exactly this effect on developing countries by
limiting/inhibiting their domestic production.
EC has also advocated continuation of present framework of rules and disciplines on domestic
support.  In Pakistan's view, the existing framework, by its very nature, is inequitable and does not
provide a level playing field to the developing countries.  We also find it disconcerting that the EC
treats the Blue and Green Boxes in the same vein.  In our view the two boxes are entirely different in
their objectives.  Pakistan strongly advocates elimination of the Blue Box.
Pakistan is of the view that Green Box criteria be reviewed with the specific objectives of (i)
limiting the misuse of some of its provisions by the developed countries to transfer their support from
the Blue and Amber Box to the Green Box;  and (i i) to provide additional flexibility to developing
countries to achieve their non-trade concerns.G/AG/NG/W/121
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If these objectives are to be met, then the EC proposal that the Green Box measures should be
expanded to include important societal goals such as protection of the environment and animal
welfare, would obviously not be acceptable to most developing countries.
Let us now touch upon multifunctionality.  The debate on multifunctionality has clearly
shown that the non-trade concerns of developing countries are very different from those of the
developed countries.  Therefore, any debate on multif unctionality must, in the first instance, recognise
this difference.  Otherwise, there would always be the danger of the richer developed countries
continuing to provide trade-distorting support to their agriculture on the pretext of addressing
multifunctional concerns, ostensibly similar to those of developing countries.
As regards the precautionary principle, Pakistan believes this would permit importing
countries to adopt such restrictive SPS measures which inhibit and in some cases entirely restrict the
exports from developing countries.  Obviously we find it difficult to support such proposal.
As far as the section on Special and Differential treatment is concerned, it must be
emphasised that S&D treatment cannot be limited to providing preferential access to some developing
countries, as EC has made it out to be.  The EC's attempt to create sub-groups within the developing
country community appears innocuous.  For this reason it is essential that trade preferences or any
minimum market access opportunities must be provided to all developing countries and not to any
sub-set of developing countries.
What the EC has said about preferences/access opportunities being "rendered stable and
predictable" sounds good.  Obviously, this can only be done provided the EC incorporates these
commitments into its Schedule.
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