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HANDBOOK ON ACCESSION TO THE WTO: CHAPTER 5

Substance of Accession Negotiations

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5.3 Negotiation of market access concessions and commitments

Goods Schedule — agricultural commitments  back to top

This section examines the format of the initial set of support tables, the way in which the results of the negotiations have been scheduled and the level of the tariff commitments undertaken by new Members.

Format for data on agricultural domestic support and export subsidies and scheduling of commitments

The factual information on domestic support and export subsidy submitted by each applicant is examined plurilaterally in an informal group composed of the applicant and interested Working Party members, in accordance with the procedures outlined above. When this information is agreed, the set of final tables forms the basis for the domestic support commitments and the export competition commitments of the acceder. For the format used and notes on these see Annex 7.2.

Results of the negotiations

A summary of the commitments undertaken by the new Members is contained in Table 9.

The table shows the de minimis levels for these Members. In a number of cases, acceders claiming developing country status had recourse to a de minimis level of 10 percent.⁴⁵⁵ In other cases Working Party Reports spell out specific provisions. An acceder accepted a 5% de minimis level but negotiated a transition period until 1 January 2003 during which SDR 24 million constituted its de minimis exemption. Another acceder agreed to a de minimis level of 10 percent until 31 December 2008 and 5 percent thereafter.⁴⁵⁶ Another acceder claimed developing country status but after negotiation agreed to include Article 6.2 measures (development programmes) in its base total AMS and to a de minimis level of 8.5 percent.⁴⁵⁷

Fourteen governments identified no base total AMS at all, meaning either that they granted no domestic support or that all domestic support applied during the base period either satisfied the “green box” criteria, was provided in accordance with Article 6.2 (development programmes), or fell below the applicable de minimis threshold for “amber box” support. “Blue box” support programs have not been reported for any of the 23 newly acceded Members.

The Schedules of the other nine new Members specify their base total AMS and their final total AMS levels of “amber box” support.⁴⁵⁸ The reductions appear to have generally been in line with the cuts made by original WTO Members under the Agreement on Agriculture — 13 percent for developing Members and 20 percent for developed Members. However, in two cases no reductions were made.⁴⁵⁹

One acceder implemented its final total AMS two years before it joined the WTO.⁴⁶⁰ The developing countries called on to make reductions over negotiated implementation periods of six and ten years respectively. Implementation periods for the other new Members concerned varied from two to four years.

* de minimis amount included in the calculation of AMS. 16 percent reduction if de minimis is excluded from final total AMS.

Source: WTO document WT/ACC/10/Rev.3, page 26; WTO document WT/ACC/SPEC/VNM/3/Rev.7 and WTO document WT/ACC/VNM/48/Add.1;
n.a.: not available

Two of the earliest acceders⁴⁶¹ undertook commitments to reduce agricultural export subsidies in Part IV of their Goods Schedules but since then all the other new Members have bound export subsidies at zero. The majority of these governments had not been providing any subsidies during the relevant base period but the four that had maintained agricultural export subsidies agreed to eliminate them fully from the date of accession.⁴⁶² This support may have been limited to a handful of agricultural sectors⁴⁶³ or it may have been available more broadly.⁴⁶⁴

Notes:

455. Agreement on Agriculture, Article 6.4 (b). LDCs are by definition developing countries subject to a de minimis of 10 percent. back to text
456. Latvia, WTO document WT/ACC/LVA/32; and Armenia, WTO document WT/ACC/ARM/23 and Corr.1 and Add.1. back to text
457. China, para 235.  back to text
458. See Bulgaria, Jordan, Croatia, Lithuania, Moldova, Chinese Taipei, FYROM, Saudi Arabia and Viet Nam. back to text
459. FYROM and Viet Nam. back to text
460. Chinese Taipei. back to text
461. Panama and Bulgaria. back to text
462. I.e. Latvia, Lithuania, FYROM and Viet Nam. back to text
463. e.g. Latvia, WTO document WT/ACC/LVA/32, paragraph 107; FYROM WT/ACC/807/27, paragraph 187. back to text
464. e.g. Lithuania, WTO document WT/ACC/LTU/52, paragraph 149. back to text

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