. /.   WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  TN/MA/W/108 
31 October 2008 
 (08-5296) 
Negotiating Group on Market Access Original:   English 
  
 
MARKET ACCESS FOR NON-AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS 
 
Sectoral Negotiations
 
 
Communication from the NAMA-111 Group of Developing Countries 
 
  The following communication, dated 27 October 2008, is being circulated at the request of the delegations of Argentina, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Brazil, Egypt, India, Indonesia, 
Namibia, South Africa and Tunisia.   
 
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 1. We, the NAMA-11 Group of Developing Countri es, recall paragraph 16 of the Ministerial 
Declaration of the Sixth Session of the Ministerial Conference adopted on 18 December 2005
2. 
Ministers at Hong Kong agreed that participation in sectoral initiatives shall be on a non-mandatory 
basis.  Sectoral Initiatives have been accepted by Members to be a "supplementary modality" to be 
voluntarily adopted for meeting ambition levels  beyond those achieved by the formula. The 
NAMA-11, as many other developing country Members, has repeatedly reminded the Negotiating Group about the non-mandatory character of these initiatives. 
 
2. However, in some recent discussions this moda lity is sought to be mainstreamed as a primary 
modality.  Unfortunately this particular position of a very limited group of countries has been in some 
way recorded by the previous Chairman of the NGMA who has included in his third revision of the Draft NAMA Modalities (TN/MA/W/103/Rev.2) that despite the mandate of the Ministers about the non-mandatory nature of the sectoral agreements, “for some Members, sectoral initiatives that reach 
a critical mass of participation will help to bal ance the overall results of the negotiation on 
non-agricultural market access, wh ich includes the coefficients in paragraph 5 and the levels of 
flexibilities and related provisions of paragraph”, thus, linking sectorals to the formula and 
flexibilities. This language contributes to the serio us imbalance of that text, as observed by the 
Ministers of the NAMA-11 in their July 2008 Minist erial Declaration (JOB(08)/89), which restated 
the position of the group that "sectoral negotiations should remain voluntary and that there could be 
no linkage between sectoral negotiations and the coefficients and flexibilities". 
 3. The last Chair’s Report (JOB(08)/96) exacerba tes this linkage by including Sectorals in a 
"package" along with formula and flexibilities. This c ontinues to negate the reality of the negotiations, 
that has largely shown that most of the developing countries are not interested in the sectoral 
negotiations. On the contrary, many of them, the poorest among them, are concerned about the impact 
that these negotiations will have on some sectors in non-participating preference dependent countries. 
 
                                                     
 
1 Argentina, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Braz il, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Namibia, South Africa 
and Tunisia.  The Philippines is not a signatory to this submission. 
2 WT/MIN(05)/DEC dated 22 December 2005. TN/MA/W/108 
Page 2  
 
  4. For the NAMA-11 any attempt to elevate sectoral negotiations negates many aspects of the 
NAMA mandate
 and the ministerial directions governing the negotiations.  In all the sectoral 
proposals the demand is to have the same end-result,  i.e. elimination of tariffs by all participants, 
barring some insignificant exceptions.  This ma kes a mockery of the underlying developmental 
objective of the DDA. The principle of "less than fu ll reciprocity in reduction commitments", which is 
already difficult to achieve with th e current structure of the modaliti es, becomes simply impossible if 
developing countries are forced to participate in th ese agreements on the propo sed terms. In addition 
to the above, the present sectoral proposals cover al most all NAMA tariff lines. If indeed such a wide 
ranging sectoral initiative is to be pursued why was all this time wasted in negotiating a formula? 
 
5. Moreover, in the present negotiations the basic balance that is being so ught to be achieved is 
between the agriculture and NAMA outcomes as stat ed in Paragraph 24 of the HKMD. In this 
equation the sectoral results, which are additional in  nature, cannot be taken into consideration and 
consequently sectoral negotiations ha ve to be conducted separately.  
 
6. Having said this, we understand that sector al initiatives can be pursued voluntarily by 
interested members as a supplementary approach, to gether with the request and offer component. In 
any event, the specific modalities agreed for each sectoral agreement should respect the basic 
principles of the NAMA negotiations as agreed to by Ministers at Doha and at Hong Kong, i.e., participation has to be non-mandatory, allow less th an full reciprocity in reduction commitments to 
developing countries and they have to include appropriate flexibilities to accommodate the specific 
needs of all developing countries. Given the present state of the individual sectoral initiatives / textual 
proposals, proponents and interested Members should continue to explore and devise modalities that 
fully respect the NAMA mandate, before wider discussions can be held on them.  
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