The Hindu Business Line : Raw deal on farm subsidies: Lamy

CANCUN: Even as the developing countries expressed their serious reservations over the revised draft, the EU Trade Commissioner, Mr Pascal Lamy, and the Agriculture Commissioner, Dr Franz Fischler, said that they were getting a rough deal on domestic farm subsidies.

"Squeezing developed countries further on the blue box, beyond the five per cent cap, would have the perverse effect that farm policy reforms towards less trade distortion would actually not be promoted but hampered."

The US Trade Representative, Mr Robert B. Zoellick, said that the facilitators have worked hard to produce this "constructive text" and hoped that "we will move the process forward".

NGOs like Oxfam dismissed the new negotiating text as "a repackaging exercise" which would do little to stop the agriculture export dumping that keeps 900 million small farmers poor.

ActionAid has sought that the text be "overhauled" to incorporate the views of developing countries.

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