Geneva: Trade ministers from developing countries, including India, will meet in Geneva tomorrow amid increasing pessimism on chances for a breakthrough in multilateral trade liberalisation talks at the WTO. Eight ministers from the G20 group of countries, including India, South Africa, Argentina and Tanzania, will meet at the behest of Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, who is the country's chief trade negotiator.

"It s probably one of the last chances for our collective voices to be not only heard but listened to," Amorim told reporters when the meeting was first announced last month. The six year-old Doha round of talks on cutting trade barriers to agriculture, industrial goods and services is still deadlocked despite a flurry of talks at WTO headquarters in Geneva.

Developing and emerging nations are seeking cuts in rich country farm subsidies and in import tariffs for agricultural produce, while industrialised nations want better access to industrial markets in poorer economies in return. Amorim struck a reasonably upbeat note earlier this week, telling the Brazilian press he still thought it was possible to conclude the Doha round within one or two years.

But the fissures between North and South remain as deep as ever, and there are also disagreements amongst developing countries themselves, trade sources said. For example, representatives of the Mercosur trading bloc in Latin America- Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Uruguay and Paraguay- proposed late last month that developing country members of customs unions be able to exclude 16 per cent of industrial products from any tariff cuts.

Source : PTI