NAMA to aims to complete modalities by June 16, 2006
04 May '06
6 min read
In the interim, however, negotiators would need to solve several other issues, such as determining Members' eligibility for different kinds of exceptions, since leaving everything to the end would be a "recipe for failure," according to his report.
Stephenson analyses progress, issue by issue
In an attempt to draw negotiators' attention to where it was most needed, Stephenson drew up a three-columned table that looked at each issue in the NAMA negotiations. The first column looked at the negotiating mandate on the issue in question from the July 2004 Framework and the Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration; the third contained Stephenson's comments on Members' proposals when consensus remained elusive, as well as on issues that had simply not been discussed. The middle column contained potential language for full modalities for the areas where Members were largely in agreement; "as you can see," wrote Stephenson, "it is quite blank."
Stephenson's report highlighted the lack of progress on the 'core modalities' since the December 2005 Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong, with Members managing to reach consensus only on some minor technical issues. He said that they had made no advances on either the number or value of the coefficients to be associated with the tariff reduction formula. The value of a Member's coefficient will be equal to the future ceiling level for its industrial tariffs; the coefficient will also determine the extent to which tariffs are cut. Nor did countries agree on how many tariff lines developing countries would be allowed to shield from tariff under Paragraph 8 of the NAMA mandate in Annex B of the July Framework, although they did manage to agree that the threshold level for the proportion of a country's trade eligible for this exemption should be defined as a share of non-agricultural imports. Members also disagreed on the specific number of percentage points that they would add to the tariffs applied on unbound lines before subjecting them to the reduction formula, though they concur that there should be a single figure for this 'constant non-linear mark up.'
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