RESTRICTED  WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  TN/MA/M/11 
20 April 2004 
 (04-1762) 
Negotiating Group on Market Access  
   
MINUTES OF THE MEETING 
 
Held in the Centre William Rappard on 29-31 March 2004
 
 
Chairman: Ambassador S. H. Jóhannesson (Iceland) 
  
Subjects discussed
                     Page  
 
1. Election of Chairperson........................................................................................................ ....1 
2. Organization of work........................................................................................................... .....1 
3. Date of the ne xt meeting ....................................................................................................... ....4 
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   The Negotiating Group adopted the agenda for the meeting circulated in document 
WTO/AIR/2275, with the inclusion of the "date of the next meeting" under "other business".   
 
1. Election of Chairperson 
1.1 On the basis of the understanding reached by the General Council at its meeting of 
11 February 2004, the Negotiating Group elected
 Ambassador Stefán H. Jóhannesson (Iceland) as 
Chairman by acclamation.  
 
2. Organization of work 
2.1 The Chairman  thanked Members for the confidence show n in him.  He expressed the Group's 
gratitude to the outgoing Chairman, Ambassador Pierre-Louis Girard.  The Group had come a long 
way since the Doha Ministerial Meeting and Ambassa dor Girard shared no small part in moving the 
process ahead. 
  
2.2 On the organization of work, first he wished  to report on the consultations he had been 
holding.  These consultations had served to familiarise  himself with the issues at hand and he now had 
a better sense of the positions of delegations and their concerns.  One clear message he had received 
from these consultations was that delegation were eager to resume work.  The political climate was 
now more conducive to an effective resumption of the Group's work. Other points that were raised in 
these discussions included the fact that the work done during the past two years should not go to 
waste; that the Group should build on it and avoid b acktracking.  Attention was also drawn to linkages 
with other areas of the negotiations.  Members perceived these linkages in  different ways, but 
obviously there had to be a balance in the package created as a result of these negotiations.    On 
future work, the concept of "window of opportunity " was often mentioned.  There appeared to be 
broad agreement that there was a window of oppor tunity from now until the summer break and the 
Group had to make full use of it.  In this regard, Members appeared to be in agreement that the Group 
should try to reach a framework on modalities before  July.  It was his understanding that the TN/MA/M/11 
Page 2  
 
 Committee on Agriculture in Special Session was work ing towards a similar objective.  While he had 
no answers on how such an objective may be achieved, the answer in fact lay with delegations, he had 
a few pointers.  First, all texts, proposals and pa pers submitted to the Group were on the table.  He 
noted that the Group had received sixty-seven papers  from Members.  The Girard papers, the Derbez 
text, the work done by the former Chairman of th e General Council, Ambassador Carlos Perez del 
Castillo, during the post-Cancún process, incl uding his comments to the General Council on 
15 December 2003 were all inputs that could be used.  The conclusion was that much work had 
already been done and should be used as the basis of the Group's future work.   
 2.3 Secondly, in the communication he had sent on 9 March,  he had identified a list of elements 
on modalities on which further discussion by delegati ons could take place during the forthcoming 
three days.  This was an indicative list, but hopefull y at least a starting point.  As mentioned earlier, it 
was for delegations to decide what they would wish to discuss keeping in mind the objective of a 
framework on modalities.  
2.4 On the practical side, he had also given hi s suggestion as to how the Group could organize the 
work for these three days.  In this  regard, following discussion under th is agenda item, he planned to 
move the meeting into informal mode and give  delegations an opportunity to introduce any new 
elements on modalities or proposals if any.   Then he intended to suspend th e meeting and reconvene 
the meeting on 31 March in the afternoon in info rmal mode.  The informal meeting on Wednesday 
would give an opportunity for those delegations that  had participated in informal consultations to 
orient the wider membership on these discussions.  It would be an exercise in stocktaking and 
transparency.  2.5 These proposed practical arrangements were directed towards giving delegations a substantive amount of time to enga ge among themselves.  This was a departure from the way previous 
meetings were organized and had apparently been the cause of some concern.  He understood that 
some delegations were of the view that such a pr ocess was premature and/or might not be transparent 
or all inclusive.  On the first point, his perception from the discussions that he had been holding was that the Group had arrived at a stage where work n eeded to be done between delegations to reach a 
more common understanding on the various elemen ts of the NAMA modalities.  If he had held a 
meeting along more conventional lines, there might ha ve been a risk of statements or positions being 
repeated.  While there was nothing wrong with such an exercise and in fact  was a necessary phase in 
all negotiations, he was hoping for more direct in teraction between Members which he thought would 
be more conducive to a greater meeting of minds. Concerning transparency and inclusiveness of the 
process, he was fully aware of the importance of th is principle especially in light of the fact his 
delegation was one of the smallest in Geneva.  As a result, he would ensure that  transparency would 
be an inherent part of the process.  Comments had also been made that unlike agriculture, NAMA did 
not have defined groupings and as a result such a me thod of work might not be effective.  However, 
he did not see why Members holding divergent viewpoints on various elements of the NAMA modalities could not meet in order to have frank exchange of views regarding their positions and 
flexibilities.  In fact, discussions of such nature were essential if the Group was to make progress.  At 
the same time, he was in the Group's hands, and if  it was deemed by the Group that this method of 
work was not useful or that progress was not being made, he was willing to review the situation for 
the next meeting.   2.6 The Negotiating Group took note
 of the Chairman's statement.  
 
2.7 The meeting turned into informal mode to give delegations an opportunity to introduce any 
new elements on modalities or proposals.  Then it was suspended.     TN/MA/M/11 
 Page 3 
 
 
 2.8 The meeting resumed on 31 March 2004, first in informal mode to give delegations an 
opportunity to report on any consultations held, and then it turned into formal mode to take up  
remaining matters.  2.9 The representative of Trinidad and Tobago, on behalf of the ACP Group
 introduced a paper 
that sought to outline the main concerns of ACP c ountries with respect to the ongoing negotiations in 
the area of Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA). Th is text attempted to bring to the table new 
ideas for possible incorporation in the modalities fra mework, while clarifying and reintroducing other 
elements, which in their opinion, had not been ade quately taken into account in the deliberations thus 
far. Essentially therefore, the proposal addressed the issues of tariffs, non-tariffs barriers, tariff 
bindings and coverage; the principles of less than fu ll reciprocity and S&D; their concerns in respect 
of preference erosion and government revenue de pletion; and the special situation of LDCs. 
 2.10 Consistent with the notion that there shoul d be an inherent balance between flexibility and 
ambition in the Framework, ACP countries shared  the view that the current NAMA negotiations 
should aim to foster the development and industri alisation processes in the Group.  Fundamental in 
this regard was inter alia  (i) the provision of additional and/or the maintenance of existing market 
opportunities (ii) flexibility in the pace and scope of future import liberalization; and (iii) building of 
supply side capacity in ACP States.  2.11 To the ACP, a reform agenda that was too ambitious in respect of industrial tariff cutting 
could entail unacceptable adjustment costs.  Accord ingly, the tariff reduction formula utilised should 
provide adequate flexibility to ACP States.  This would also allow ACP States to preserve effective 
levels of preferences needed to maintain their export competitiveness.  A possible approach in this 
regard, could be the identification, for exclusion,  of specific tariff lines of products exported under 
preferences and according such products different tr eatment such that the margin of preference was 
less drastically affected as MFN tariffs were reduced. 
 2.12 The maintenance of the use of tariffs for development purposes, as envisaged by GATT 
Article XXVIII, was also germane. Equally importa nt, was meaningfully addressing the full spectrum 
of non-transparent and discretionary NTBs that had been erected against ACP  exports.  As 
emphasised in the ACP Group's proposal, the incorpor ation of special and differential treatment and 
the principle of less than full reciprocity into th e Framework, was critical. It was proposed that the 
variables, which should be give n consideration in the formulation of modalities included the 
percentages of tariff reductions; special treatment  for sensitive products and sectors; exemption from 
tariff cuts; and implementation time periods.  Indeed in most African and Caribbean countries on average, in excess of 40% of government income was derived from tariff revenue. Further, in many 
instances classical fiscal reform was too costly to implement and was not a feasible option in the 
short-term.    2.13 For the ACP, bound tariffs represented the only legal basis for WTO negotiations. Binding 
coverage for some ACP countries was as low as 3%. As  such, if developing countries were to increase 
the share of their trade covered by binding commit ments and also reduce applied tariffs, this would 
undoubtedly constitute a disproporti onate level of commitment. More over, if ACP States were to 
reduce MFN bound rates below their existing applied rates, this would effectively eliminate their 
flexibility to use tariffs for development purposes.  2.14 In general, ACP countries could not and di d not employ anti-dumping and other contingency 
measures. Thus, if countries within the ACP Group we re to cut mfn bound rates, leaving applied rates 
alone or partly reduced, this in itself would still afford security of access to  their markets. The ACP 
Group also supported the proposal to exempt LDCs  from making further reduction commitments. 
 2.15 The Negotiating Group took note
 of the statement. TN/MA/M/11 
Page 4  
 
 2.16 The Chairman
 recalled that at the July 2003 meeting of the NGMA it was agreed that 
participants should submit new no tifications on NTBs in order to improve or supplement the 
information that had already been submitted in the previous notification exercise. Moreover, in order 
to improve the responses and analysis it was agreed that the Secretariat would send out the format for 
such notification including a new inventory categori sation. Pursuant to this, a fax was sent to all 
delegations on 8 September 2003 which included the format and inventory categories for the 
notifications as well as a reminder to submit the in formation by 31 October 2003. The notifications 
received thus far were circulated in TN/MA/W/46 a nd Add.1 which were available for this meeting. A 
notification from Jordan had also recently come in. In this connection, he urged Members to make the 
maximum effort possible to make this notification and in particular to fill in column 7 where 
participants were requested to indicate how they wo uld like to address the barrier in the context of the 
negotiations.  He requested de legations to do the necessary groundwork, i.e. go through the 
notifications in order to see what measures had been notified and think about where and how they 
could be addressed.   
2.17 The Negotiating Group took note
 of the Chairman's statement. 
 
3. Date of the next meeting 
3.1 The Chairman  informed the Group that its next meeting would take place from 10 to 12 May.  
Another meeting of the Group was scheduled for 9-11  June, and a third meeting would be organized 
for July.  
 
3.2 The Negotiating Group took note  of the information. 
 
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