Exporters applaud hard-won agreement

By BRIAN FALLOW, Economics editor

A chorus of relieved cheering from the export sector has greeted the agreement after six days of hard bargaining and brinkmanship in Doha, Qatar to start a round of world trade negotiations.

The outcome was in doubt till the very end. "We spent most of today in a state of near despair," Trade Minister Jim Sutton said.

"India was saying it would not join the consensus, which would have meant the whole thing fell over.

"All of [World Trade Organisation director-general] Mike Moore's political craft was needed. Delegates had to filibuster to give Mike and others time to work on New Delhi."

Another major sticking point was European - especially French and Irish - opposition to having the phasing out of agricultural export subsidies as one of the objectives of the round.

They settled for concessions in other areas of the negotiations, and the addition of a clause to the effect that the talk of phasing out should should not be taken as prejudging the outcome of negotiations to come.

The Doha agreement gives a mandate for negotiations on market access, not only in agriculture but industrial products, forest products, and services.

The trade ministers also agreed to make further analysis of investment and competition policy, something the Europeans are keen on, as a first step towards negotiations in these areas in two years.

They set a target date of January 2005 for completion of the round.

Mr Sutton said New Zealand officials played a leading role in brokering agreement on intellectual property and poor countries' access to cheaper medicines.

Federated Farmers chief executive Tony St Clair said, "We are elated."

As well as the pernicious effects of export subsidies in third-country markets, New Zealand farmers had to cope with agricultural tariffs that were on average 10 times higher than those on other goods.

That cost them hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Fonterra chief executive Craig Norgate said, "Trade reform is a long and tortuous process and we are only at the starting line.

"While United States and European Union producers would also benefit from agricultural reform because it would make them more efficient, we can be confident in our ability to compete with them and deliver returns to New Zealand dairy farmers."

Meat Industry Association executive director Brian Lynch said the Doha agreement offered realistic prospects that serious attention would be paid to some key markets in Asia where tariffs were still high, and others which had tonnage limits exporters would like to see negotiated higher.

"The pervasive unease that would have resulted if there had been another failure to launch a round was just too awful to contemplate."

The Seafood Industries Council welcomed the agreement's reference to eliminating fish catch subsidies.

Its trade general manager, Alastair Macfarlane, said $US15 billion was spent on fishing subsidies, mainly in Japan, Korea, Europe, Canada and the United States.

"It's a pernicious problem rather than an acute one," he said.

The subsidies led to unsustainable fishing practices.

The Council of Trade Unions was disappointed by the lack of a reference to labour standards in the final text.

CTU secretary Paul Goulter said nothing in the statement indicated that workers' interests would be protected in the freeing of world trade.