Pakistan s Commerce Minister Hamayun Akhtar has gone to Geneva to attend deliberations of his counterparts from various WTO negotiating alliances, said an official statement. These alliances include G20, G33 and NAMA-11. they are holding meetings of their Groups as well as collective meetings to exchange views on the status of negotiations of the Doha Round and also to discuss their strategy in the coming weeks. Trade and Foreign Ministers attending these discussions included Celso Amorim of Brazil, Kamal Nath of India, Mari E. Pangestu of Indonesia, Mpahwa of South Africa and Yi Xiao Zhun of China. Ministers agreed that they have now entered the crucial final phase of negotiations. While they may have to show flexibility in some areas of negotiations, there are certain areas where they need to remain firm. These include reduction of trade distorting agricultural subsidies in particular deep cuts in overall trade distorting support by the United States. It was unanimously agreed that the current figure of $22 billion offered by the United States was not enough. It has to be around what the G-20 is demanding or around $12 billion. Similarly EU must agree to G-20 demand on market access and limit its demand of sensitive products. Akhtar shared the general perception that the Round is entering the final phase. At this stage one has to be careful about the balance between flexibility and ambition. While developing countries would have to show flexibility, they should not compromise on ambition, he said adding that for Pakistan it was important that while addressing issues of market access, attention must be given to fullest liberalization of tropical products, addressing tariff escalation and tariff capping etc. The minister said issue of cotton was important for Pakistan and it fully supported the position of Cotton-4 (C-4) African countries.
