UAE Ministry of Foreign Trade to organise Non-Agricultural Market Access training workshop

To be held under the patronage of Minister of Foreign Trade H.E. Sheikha Lubna Bint Khalid Al Qasimi, the workshop will train Arab trade officials on the mechanisms involved in non-agricultural goods negotiations and discuss the reduction of customs duties on a range of non-agricultural goods in accordance with the Doha Development Agenda.

Mr. Sultan Darwish, Director of the Department of Trade Negotiations and the World Trade Organization, Ministry of Foreign Trade, said that market access to non-agricultural goods is an important component in the Doha Development Agenda of multilateral negotiations promoted by the WTO. WTO members had previously encountered difficulty agreeing on the modalities and methodology to be adopted for the reduction of linked customs duties due to diverging views among developed, developing and least developed member countries.

The first team wanted a further reduction in fees than that supported by the second panel comprised of developing countries, which linked the reduction of tariffs on non-agricultural goods to the reduction in support that the developed countries provide to agricultural products.

Developing countries also called for a serious application of the development negotiations through a longer period of meeting the necessary obligations and commitments. They also sought an adherence to the principle of asymmetry between them and the developed countries in terms of the levels of reduced customs duties by granting them greater flexibility to exclude sensitive goods in addition to lessening reduction rates compared to those of developed countries.

During the workshop, participants will be trained to apply the formulas and processes for deriving the new percentages of the linked charges. In addition, they will be trained to prepare tables according to the latest WTO agreements with emphasis on Major GATT conventions; the conventional GATT framework and former negotiations; WTO accession negotiations; Non-Agricultural Market Access negotiations related to the demands of the Doha Development Agenda and a summary of the scientific developments so far; a preliminary plan of NAMA negotiation models related to Swiss formula and its applications as well as related technical matters; a preliminary plan of NAMA negotiation models related to non-exchange of the elimination of preference; an overview of non-tariff barriers and the current status of the negotiations; possible strategies to comply with various models of negotiation; and public debate.