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Copyright 2005 The Financial Times Limited
Financial Times (London, England)

April 8, 2005 Friday
London Edition 1

SECTION: LETTERS TO THE EDITOR; Pg. 18

LENGTH: 233 words

HEADLINE: A helping hand for developing nations

BYLINE: By DUNCAN GREEN

BODY:


From Mr Duncan Green.

Sir, Your correspondents rightly point out the obstacles in attempting to differentiate between developing countries within the World Trade Organisation ("Who's for the WTO?", Comment & Analysis, April 5).

A practical approach that could address this is to break down negotiations by individual products instead of by country. In agriculture, crops such as rice, maize or cotton are grown in developing countries predominantly by smallholder farmers who often earn little more than a dollar a day. Agreeing rules that safeguard individual crops could reaffirm development as the core of the current round of WTO negotiations.

To that end, a group of developing countries in the WTO, known as the G33, is calling for greater flexibility to maintain tariff protection on such crops (so-called "special products"). Although the idea was accepted in principle last summer, rich countries, especially the US, are now trying to water down the idea in the run-up to the Hong Kong ministerial in December.

This principle could also be applied in relation to other areas under negotiation, such as industrial tariffs or services. By applying a specific pro-development filter to trade rules that is less crude than simple country-by-country differentiation, some of the obstacles to progress in the development round might be overcome.

Duncan Green, Head of Research, Oxfam GB, Oxford OX2 7DZ

LOAD-DATE: April 7, 2005