BALI, Indonesia — The failure of the World Trade Organization to put into effect a 2005 agreement to eliminate export subsidies by 2013 em-erged this week as a symbol of the WTO’s decade-long inertia.
Delegates and ministers attending the ninth WTO ministerial conference are considering a simple resolution to recommit to export subsidy elimination but without a deadline.
“We note with deep disappointment that the deadline to implement export subsidy elimination in 2013 as stipulated in the Hong Kong ministerial declaration was missed and that a legally binding outcome to eliminate export subsidies and all export measures with equivalent effect could not be realized in Bali,” said a statement issued Dec. 2 by the G-33 group of WTO members, one of the sponsors of a modest agricultural package being debated.
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The G-20 group of developing agricultural exporters, which includes Brazil, India and Indonesia, added to the complaint.
“G-20 deeply regretted the delay in eliminating all forms of export subsidies as mandated in the … WTO Ministerial Declaration in Hong Kong,” the group said in a communiqué after a late-afternoon meeting Dec. 2.
“The G-20 re-emphasized that export subsidies are policies that strongly distort international trade.”
Members of the group, including some agricultural powerhouses, see export subsidies as tools used by rich developed countries to dispose of surplus production caused by domestic subsidies.
They called on developed countries to “eliminate export subsidies and other subsidies in the agricultural sector as was mandated in the WTO agreement on agriculture.”
However, WTO agriculture committee chair John Adank said it is unlikely.
Many of the countries that use or have used export subsidies agreed to their elimination in Hong Kong on the assumption it would be an early concession that would trigger concessions from others in a final WTO deal.
“Because the round wasn’t completed overall, a number of members said we can’t really bring forward what we said we would do in Hong Kong because it was predicated on a package of rules,” Adank said in an interview.”
Unilateral action on subsidies would free other countries from needing to make their own concessions.
Adank said the result was inclusion of a resolution re-asserting the goal in this week’s proposed mini-agricultural package.
“What has been presented is, if we couldn’t get agreement to do that, we at least could give a very strong symbol that people didn’t want to go backwards on export competition.”
However, the proposal would carry no obligation for action outside of a complete deal, even if it was approved in Bali horse-trading this week.
There has been some revival of using export subsidies as a marketing tool in recent years.
