Asia Pacific regionalism: Mark Vaile speaks out; Australian Trade Minister presented an executive paper on global trading and Asia Pacific regionalism in Santiago, Chile recently. Here is his presentation.

• Author: Vaile, Mark
• Position: Cover Story

"I'm very pleased to open this discussion on the global trading system. I am particularly pleased that I am able to share with you some positive observations about the WTO negotiations.

Three years ago, a new round of trade negotiations was launched in Doha. The negotiating mandate that Ministers endorsed in Doha was broad and ambitious, it represented a skilful balance between the varied interests of WTO members while maintaining the integrity of a strong commitment to liberalisation.

However, since then, progress has been slow. You no doubt heard about the failure of last year's ministerial meeting in Cancun to reach an outcome. In reality, the failure at Cancun was not a failure of the WTO, but a reflection on the Member States.

Until recently, many WTO Members had simply not accepted the importance of delivering genuine, substantial trade liberalisation through the Doha Round. In particular, they failed to understand that agricultural trade liberalisation was an essential outcome for developing countries, as well as for agricultural exporters like Australia. I will return to the issue of developing countries later.

First, I would like to explain why I think there is now room for optimism regarding the Doha round provided the optimism is teamed with a large amount of determination and the necessary political will.

July framework agreement

At the end of July 2004, Members of the WTO agreed on a framework package to guide the remainder of the Doha round negotiations.

The framework package was an important step towards the conclusion of the round:

* it secured an historic commitment to abolish export subsidies on agricultural products

* it promised substantial reductions in domestic support for agriculture

* and it produced a better approach to agricultural tariff cuts and market opening than we faced in Cancun

The July package is not as proscriptive on industrial products, but it does reaffirm the need for across-the-board reductions in tariffs and non-tariff barriers including high tariff peaks and tariff escalation in some industrial products.

The prospects for improved global trade in services also received a boost from the July agreement. Given the key role of services in mature economies and their emerging role in developing economies--it is essential that services industries benefit from the final Doha agreement.

With further effort, the package can lead the way to global improvements in market access for agricultural and non-agricultural products and services.

From an Australian perspective, the July package was not perfect--it could only have been more ambitious. Nevertheless, the package points the way to an outcome and reaffirms our commitment to multilateral liberalisation.

But the quality of this outcome and how much it can deliver--to developed and developing...