India sets core group of nine to counter U.S. on Nama

By agencies   |   Wednesday, 14 December 2005, 20:30 IST
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HONG KONG: Led by India and South Africa, developing countries today set up a “core group” to address the challenges posed by the developed countries on Non-agricultural Market Access (Nama) negotiations. Supported by nine developing countries including like Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines, Venezuela, Namibia and Egypt, the core group on Nama expressed their displeasure at the exclusion of the provision pertaining to “flexibilities for developing countries” from the draft ministerial text at the sixth ministerial conference in Hong Kong. “While developing countries are prepared to make a contribution to the Nama negotiations, we find the developed countries reluctant to offer their fair share,” the letter said, adding that Para 8 of the July framework agreement, which allows developing countries two flexibilities in the form of applying less than formula cuts for up to 10 percent tariff lines and keeping up to 5 percent of the tariff lines as unbound, should be finally settled as a stand-alone provision with no linkage to other formulae and elements. Build-up to the setting up of the core group began earlier in the day when Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath said he had asked the European Union to lay its precise percentage cuts in Nama on the table and offered that India would undertake two-thirds of the cuts offered by it. “I have asked them to lay the specific offer on the table; they have not come back to me,” he said.