Sunday, December 18 2005 10:21 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Hong Kong: Trade negotiators from 149 WTO members made some modest movement forward after some hard bargaining in the last hours of the Ministerial, which ended yesterday (Dec 17,2005)with India managing to get most of its concerns on board in agriculture and industrial goods.

"We are on the verge of a deal," Commerce Minister Kamal Nath said after a 12-hour green room meeting.

India's demand for Special Products and Special Safeguard Mechanism to address its food security and livelihood concerns are expected to be on board the final declaration, officials said.

The final Ministerial declaration, which is expected later in the day is likely to propose 2013 as the end date for elimination of export subsidies in agriculture as the EU is not willing to accept 2010 as the end date.

"The only sticking point is the end date. My view is that we should get to a date, it does not make much difference if it is 2010 or 2013 as three years hardly made any difference," he said.

The draft text Friday had proposed to options of 2010 and five years from commencement of the round as the end date.

Besides, this there is broad convergence on developing countries making no cut in their de minimis support, a provision which will allow countries like India to continue support to their poor farmers.

On industrial goods also some forward movement is made on less than full reciprocity for developing countries, a provision as per which they will only have to make two third of the tariff cut made by developed nations.

Less than full reciprocity was a major demand of the developing countries like India who had formed an alliance to push their interests.

However, on services, the final text is likely to be a more watered down version based more on the Least Developed Countries' declaration.

On the LDC duty-free quota-free package also the language is expected to be more specific with the grouping making it clear yesterday that they wanted a real deal.