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TWN
Info Service on WTO and Trade Issues (May23/06) Dear friends, Extra AMS entitlements under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture continue to confer additional policy space for developed countries The additional Final Bound Aggregate Measurement of Support (FBAMS) entitlements that mostly developed countries enjoy as fixed additional allowances over de minimis limits under the rules of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) provide a clear bias in their favour, continue to give massive advantages to them in real terms, and allow them in turn to dominate global agricultural markets. This has undermined not only developing countries’ fair access to export markets but also even their ability to continue and augment domestic agricultural production and productivity amid unfair import competition. A new Third World Network Briefing Paper uses up-to-date data to argue that the FBAMS entitlements remain the primary source of inequity in the AoA, because these are additional and unjustified benefits conferred on only a few, mostly developed countries; the subsidies are often concentrated heavily on a few products without facing any product-specific limit; and both the total and product-specific use of these entitlements are disproportionate to the size or need of the sector(s) as indicated by value of production. Disciplines on AMS entitlements should be the first stepping stone to a concrete revision in the rules of the AoA and should be a non-negotiable issue for developing countries in the upcoming 13th Ministerial Conference of the WTO. The
TWN Briefing Paper is available at https://twn.my/title2/briefing_papers/twn/AMS%20entitlements With
best wishes,
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