The Secretariat of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States

Press Release: G90/ACPs call for a fair trade package for all developing countries 

Hong Kong, 14 December 2005 –

At a meeting with the press in Hong Kong today in the context of the WTO summit, Madun Dulloo, ACP coordinator and Minister of Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Cooperation for Mauritius insisted that development should be the deliverable of the Doha development agenda. He also stressed that it would be “very difficult for the G90/ ACP to be party to an agreement where we would lose our markets”. 

The ACP coordinator also highlighted four key areas of concern and importance for the G90/ACP group during the Hong Kong negotiations, namely Development, Agriculture, NAMA and services. 

On development Minister Dulloo said that the G90/ ACP would like to see “substantial progress on Special & Differential Treatment, on implementation issues, small economies and more importantly on a package to address the problem of supply side capacity and adjustment”. “We would like to see an aid for trade package that is meaningful and effective”, he said.

On Agriculture, the Minister said that “the G90/ ACP call for the elimination of export subsidies within a credible end date, substantial reductions of trade distorting domestic support as well as linear and flexible tariff reduction formula”. He also said that the Group would like to see the problem of preference erosion being effectively addressed through lesser tariff cuts on products of export interest to the group and a longer implementation period. These products should be classified as sensitive on the Group’s export markets. The Group would also like to see “the issue of special safeguard mechanism being addressed”.

On NAMA the Minister said that there was a need to “consolidate our nascent industrial base and it would be necessary to identify products that are vulnerable to preference erosion”. There are currently 600 – 700 products suffering from erosion.

On another controversial issue, services, Dulloo said that the G90/ ACP has made it clear that the flexibilities contained in the current services agreement should not be tampered with.

The ACP/ G90 position for Hong Kong is laid out in the G90 declaration which can be consulted here. The G90 consists of a broad platform including ACP, LDCs and members of the African Union (AU).  

Contacts :

Holy Ramanankasina: 65418565, Giles Keane: 65927064, Mari Skarholt: 65342978