Trade officials left the 14th World Trade Organization ministerial conference in Yaoundé, Cameroon, Monday without extending a tariff moratorium on digital transmissions and with no firm path forward on reform discussions.
Heading into the meeting, which was supposed to run Thursday to Sunday but ran on into Monday, the U.S. was pushing to make the so-called “e-commerce moratorium” permanent, and many countries were hoping to find agreement on the scope of reform discussions.
“We are very close to a Yaoundé package of agreements that would be important for Members and the future of the organization,” WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said in remarks at the end of the conference. “We've worked really hard here, and we are very close, but we're not all the way there yet.”
Cameroon’s Minister for Trade Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana, who also chaired the ministerial, argued that members “ran out of time” to reach consensus on the issues.
Okonjo-Iweala said the WTO would bring a “Yaoundé package” back to Geneva to continue discussions at the next General Council meeting. The date of that meeting has not yet been set.
The package will include a draft text on a work plan for WTO reform, a draft ministerial declaration on e-commerce, a draft ministerial declaration on certain intellectual property complaints, and a draft ministerial decision on fisheries subsidies.
“Finalizing this package would amount to a considerable achievement,” Okonjo-Iweala said. “We shouldn't leave it on the table.”
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The e-commerce moratorium is set to expire at the end of March. Unless it is extended or made permanent, countries would be able to impose tariffs on electronic transmissions, like software and other digital products.
The outcome also tees up further discussions on expanding an agreement to curb harmful fishing subsidies. WTO members in 2022 agreed to restrict the most damaging supports that contribute to illegal activities and the overfishing of certain stocks. As part of that deal, which went into force last year, countries agreed to continue discussions on expanding the agreement to additional activities.
According to a WTO statement, this week in Cameroon, members agreed to continue discussions with a view to issuing recommendations for expanding the agreement at the next ministerial conference in two years’ time.
The only decisions reached in Cameroon were two measures that officials had already endorsed before the conference started at discussions in Geneva – an effort to boost developing economies’ participation in the global trading system and to streamline developing economies’ requirements under the agreements on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures and Technical Barriers to Trade.
Agricultural discussions at the body have long been stalled. Members tabled several new provisions for restarting the discussions ahead of the ministerial in Cameroon, but several members said they couldn’t support the proposals or draft text.
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