WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  TN/AG/GEN/24 
13 March 2007 
 
 (07-1063) 
Committee on Agriculture 
Special Session Original:   English 
 
 
NEGOTIATING PROPOSAL BY RECENTLY ACCEDED MEMBERS (RAMS) 
 
 
 The following communication, dated 12 March 2007, is being circulated at the request of the Delegations of Albania, Armenia, China, Croatia , Ecuador, Former Yugosla v Republic of Macedonia, 
Jordan, Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Mongolia, Oman , Panama, Saudi Arabia, The Separate Customs 
Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu, and Viet Nam.  
 
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INTRODUCTION 
 
1. The question of the appropriate treatment for the RAMs has been on the agenda since the 
negotiations started back in 2001.  Respectively, the specific provisions on the issue of RAMs are 
present not only in the Doha Declaration, but also  in the Framework Agreement and finally in the 
Hong Kong Declaration.  The provisions in those documents represent a clear mandate on RAMs and 
as such should be used as a stepping stone toward s the full modalities in this area of negotiations. 
2. Throughout the years the membership of the RAMs group has evolved and is still changing as 
negotiations proceed.  Following the outcome of th e consultation process within the GC last summer 
on the question of the membership in the RAMs, 14 Members decided to pursue common goals by 
forming a coalition, which is recently joined by Vi et Nam, aimed at streamlining individual efforts 
into a common voice which we hope could bring benef its to the negotiating process as a whole.  Like 
many other negotiating groups, RAMs have their ow n particularities, but their goals and ideas are 
common and justified.  
PROPOSAL 
 3. The position of the RAMs which calls for a diffe rentiated treatment within these negotiations 
is legitimate due to the fact that in the pro cess of accession the RAMs assumed extensive level of 
commitments in all WTO areas, distinguishing thereby the group from the rest of the membership.  In 
this regard RAMs consider that the aim of this  development round should not be to deepen already 
existing discrepancies between developing Members, or  to disadvantage those that have done their 
share in contributing extensively to the world tr ading system.  Instead, Members should pursue an 
approach that takes into account different rea lities which exist among their schedules and envisages a 
more balanced outcome.  
4. Before coming to the specifics of the proposal it is important to recall that Saudi Arabia, 
FYROM and Viet Nam requested that they be ex empted from undertaking any further commitments 
or concessions within the current round in vi ew of their very recent accession processes and 
respective commitments that they just started to  implement. Furthermore, Members of the group 
which meet the criteria for SVEs shall have recourse to such treatment. TN/AG/GEN/24 
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  5. In view of the present text of the Draft Possible Modalities on Agriculture as set out in 
TN/AG/W/3, the group of recently acceded Members would hereby like to propose following changes 
to the wording on RAMs which would ensure that all concerns by the group are taken fully into 
account: 
 
II. MARKET ACCESS 
F. R
ECENTLY ACCEDED MEMBERS  
38. Recently acceded Members shall have a grace period of at least five years, 
and shall be granted an implementation peri od of at least 5 years longer than other 
developing country members1. To the extent that the implementation period of 
commitments undertaken in acceding to the WTO overlaps with the implementation 
period of commitments undertaken in associ ation with these modalities, the start of 
implementation of commitments undertaken in  association with these modalities shall 
begin 5 years after the end of implementation of accession commitments. 
39. Recently acceded Members may reduce bound duties by 50 per cent of the 
reduction that would otherwise have been required by tiered formula for developing 
countries and bound duties equal to or below 10 per cent in a recently acceded 
member shall be exempt from reduction.  Given these flexibility provisions, it is 
understood that recently acceded members sha ll not be required to undertake any 
average tariff cut commitment.  
40. Recently acceded Members shall have  the following additional flexibility on 
the selection and treatment of Special Pr oducts: [ ].  And on sensitive products the 
following additional flexibility [ ]. Furthermore, recently acceded Members shall 
have following additional flexibility when it comes to the Special Safeguard 
Mechanism:[].  
41. Small low-income, recently acceded Members with economies in transition 
shall not be required to undertake reducti ons in bound duties and shall have access to 
all instruments available to other Member s at the same level of development under 
Market Access.  
III. DOMESTIC SUPPORT 
H. R
ECENTLY ACCEDED MEMBERS  
94. Recently acceded Members shall have a grace period of at least five years, 
and shall be granted an implementation peri od of at least 5 years longer than other 
developing country Members.  To the extent that the implementation period of 
commitments undertaken in acceding to the WTO overlaps with the implementation period of commitments undertaken in associ ation with these modalities, the start of 
implementation of commitments undertaken in  association with these modalities shall 
begin 5 years after the end of implementation of accession commitments. 
95. Recently acceded Members who hav e the bound AMS commitment shall 
maintain their current de minimis level . Small, low-income, recently acceded 
                                                     
 
1 Text in italics represents the new proposals by RAMs.  TN/AG/GEN/24 
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  members with economies in transition shall not be required to undertake reductions 
in Final Bound Total AMS and de minimis level.  
96. In the case of such Members, inve stment subsidies and input subsidies 
generally available to agriculture shall not be required to be included in their AMS/de 
minimis calculation. Such subsidies accompanied with interest subsidies to reduce the 
costs of financing as well as grants to cover debt repayment shall be exempted from 
domestic support AMS commitments 
 
REASONS 
 6. As a part of liberalization commitments and obligations RAMs have undertaken in the 
accession process tariff bindings that were set close to  or equal to applied levels.  Furthermore, the 
tariffs are bound at very low levels (bound average is 17.07%) or 3.57 times lower than the average 
final bound tariffs of developing country Members (6 0.95%), as clearly displayed in attached graph. 
7. RAMs' tariff structure reveals that in average 7.14% of our  tariffs are bound as duty free, 
while the bulk of them or nearly 80% is set at under 20%.  Moreover, RAMs currently do not 
implement any form of export subsidies, nor do th ey use any trade distorting practices by exporting 
STEs.  These facts and figures clearly indicate th at the magnitude of commitments RAMs undertook 
within the process of accession could be compared  only to the commitments assumed by developed 
Members. 
8. The present level of RAMs' commitments could hardly be reached by other developing and 
many developed countries as the result of this round’s reductions, even if the round would produce 
more ambitious results.  At the same time this a dvanced level for RAMs represents the starting point 
for the implementation of the DDA commitments. 
9. The reasons for special treatment of small low-income count ries in transition, which are all 
recently acceded Members, are very clearly expressed  in their formal proposals, submitted to the 
Special Session of Committee on Agriculture (doc uments TN/AG/GEN/10 and Corr.1, dated 29 June 
and 6 July 2005, TN/AG/GEN/16 dated 20 April 2006 and TN/AG/GEN/21 dated 16 June 2006).  
CONCLUSION 
 
10. There is an urgent need to conclude the nego tiations as soon as possible.  In order to do so 
RAMs are of the view that core issues in the negotia tions should be tackled first, enabling us to derive 
from these modalities the flexibilities that should be aw arded to RAMs.  Such approach appears to be 
most sensible way to address this issue to the satisfaction of all Members involved. 
11. On this path, RAMs stand ready to engage with  other Members to achieve a solution that will, 
among others, effectively address all concerns  flagged by RAMs in our negotiations. 
 TN/AG/GEN/24 
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  Bound averages of agricultural tariffs 
in various WTO groupings 
12,517,0760,9567,675,8
01020304050607080
Developed
CountriesRAMs Developing
countriesSVEs LDCsBound average 
percentage
S ource: WTO-IDB, ITC, UNCTAD
Not e: based only on AV dut ies
 
 
 
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