Worried that too few of its farm products may be exempted from massive tariff cuts, Japan plans to keep up the pressure on other World Trade Organization members as they try to hammer out a multilateral trade agreement.
Pointing to a draft interim agreement presented Friday by WTO General Council Chairman Shotaro Oshima, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Yoshiyuki Kamei said at a news conference Tuesday that Japan has already made some progress in getting its voice heard through WTO negotiations.
Government bureaucrats and ruling coalition politicians say the draft incorporates two of Japan's key contentions on agricultural trade liberalization.
Specifically, the draft text excludes farm products whose protection is deemed crucial, such as rice for Japan, from uniform tariff cuts and effectively postpones the introduction of maximum tariff rates for a range of agricultural products.
Still, farm ministry officials and Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers hope to eliminate, or at least minimize, whatever uncertainties remain over these key issues.
When they gather for a General Council meeting next week in Geneva, WTO members are hoping to put the finishing touches to a long-delayed framework agreement for the so-called Doha Round of global trade talks.
In the upcoming negotiations, Japan will focus on substantially expanding the scope of sensitive farm products to be excluded from uniform tariff cuts, sources said.
Japan has to date maintained that it wants to designate about 30 percent of its agricultural products as sensitive items off-limits to deep tariff cuts.
According to the draft agreement, however, the number of sensitive items would be limited to the number of items for which the government has set low-tariff import quotas.
For Japan, this would mean no more than about 120 items, or less than 10 percent of agricultural products currently subject to tariffs.
So serious is the government taking the issue that it is considering sending Kamei to make its case on agricultural sector liberalization, sources said.
The General Council meeting is usually attended by Geneva-based ambassadors from WTO members.
Farm ministry officials and LDP lawmakers fear the revival of a proposal to introduce maximum tariff rates. To prevent this from happening, some LDP politicians have said the reference to maximum tariff rates should be eliminated altogether from the final framework agreement.
The United States and other farm exporters have called for imposing a tariff cap on agricultural products.Asahi Shimbun:
