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THE DECEMBER 15 deadline set at Cancun has come and gone without any concrete progress being made on the Doha Round multilateral trade negotiations. In fact, what has been agreed on, albeit informally, by the majority of members of the World Trade Organisation is that the end-2004 deadline for the conclusion of the Doha Round (launched in November 2001) will not be met. This, in effect, puts paid to the hopes of all those who had expected the Doha Round to provide a substantive push to the development concerns of the poor economies, thus setting this Round from the others that have preceded it.

There is, however, no dearth of optimism among the groups involved in the negotiations; obviously, every country/group wants to convince everyone else that it is not playing the spoilsport. Thus, at the last APEC meeting in Bangkok, where some developed countries were also present, a specific call was issued to "re-energise the negotiations by building on ... (the draft ministerial) text of September 13," focussing on the need for "flexibility and political will" on the part of all concerned. African countries gave a similar call in Cairo some time later; they are reported to have made the concession of setting aside specific problems with the September 13 text to get the negotiations process re-started on the basis of that document. Central American and Carribean countries, at separate meetings, have also played the same tune.

But, clearly, the focus must be on the stand of the G-20 (though the membership at last count was 19), formed on the eve of the Cancun conference to voice the demands of the most important developing economies. At Cancun, this group, with India in the vanguard, focussed on agriculture issues, specifically domestic farm support and export subsidies and stopped the steamrolling attempts of the developed economies. The obvious question now is if there has been any shift in the G-20 stand on these and other subjects, which could make easier the resumption of the Doha Round negotiations. Not really, going by what transpired at the December 11-12 Brasilia meeting of the group, along with the EU. No specific commitments were made, and the substantive part of the communique issued after the meeting merely said there was "general agreement that we need to intensify negotiations early next year and to move as quickly as possible into an increased dialogue between all partners to achieve real and substantive progress in line with the Doha mandate and within the timeframe defined therein".

The prospects of an early resumption of the negotiations are, therefore, not too bright though there has been some movement forward on the four Singapore issues; the `unbundling' approach has been accepted by some of the leading players such as the EU. However, these same countries have underscored that for effective progress on the talks there must be agreement in the areas of "core competence" of the WTO — agriculture, non-agricultural market access, services and development issues. Will Washington and Brussels oblige, especially as 2004 is a presidential election year in the US, and the inefficient farming community in Europe is an important political constituency?

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Doha Round on slow track

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