Let me touch on a few areas where progress in the Doha Development Agenda will help poorer countries reap further gains from trade and enhance their potential for sustainable development.
Agriculture is and has always been a fundamental sector for many developing countries. Agriculture is critical to the successful conclusion of the negotiations. Ambitious liberalization in this sector can offer big potential gains for all countries,particularly developing countries. WTO members are committed to comprehensive negotiations aimed at addressing market access,export subsidies and trade distorting domestic support. More than 50 developing countries depend on agriculture for over one-third of their merchandise export earnings. The eventual elimination of trade distorting measures which affect agricultural trade will be a tremendous boost for sustainable development. The World Bank has estimated that phasing out restrictions on agriculture could lead to higher income in developing countries of some US $400 billion by 2015. The gains from this are several times larger than all the debt relief granted to developing countries so far.
Tariff peaks and tariff escalation:after many rounds of trade negotiations,average tariffs on non- agricultural products have been significantly reduced. But relatively high tariffs still remain on some products in which developing countries are competitive and tariffs go up as the level of processing in-creases. Tariff escalation prevents developing countries from moving away from dependence on a few commodities.Tariff peaks and tariff escalation must be brought down by the negotiations,if developing countries are to be able to meaningfully gain from world merchandise trade.
Doing away with trade barriers in agriculture means exempting developing countries from debts. ( )