10:18 PM Sep 19, 1996
US DEMANDS FOR IMPLEMENTING ATC REJECTED
Geneva 19 Sep (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- Developing countries, exporters of textiles and clothing products, firmly rejected Wednesday, demands by the United States (and Japan) for reciprocal market opening concessions to enable it to implement the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC). The demand and rebuttal came at the meeting of the WTO's Committee on Trade in Goods which has been reviewing the implementation of the ATC and the report/recommendations in this area to the Singapore Ministerial Conference. At the last meeting of the CTG, Pakistan on behalf of several developing countries had put forward a paper, analysing how the major industrial countries were implementing the ATC, and their failure to bring about a liberalisation of trade. Both the EU and the US at that point had introduced their own papers, calling for reciprocal market access concessions and actions to prevent circumvention of the quotas and limitations. At the meeting Thursday, the CTG which is chaired by Amb. S. Narayanan of India, heard a lengthy presentation by the United States of its stand, but was rebuffed by several Third World delegations as 'unacceptable'. The US Textile negotiator, Ms Rita Hayes referred to Art. 7 of the ATC (which speaks of improved market access to be achieved for textile and clothing products, but only in terms of specific commitments undertaken by Members in the Uruguay Round, and cited President Clinton's commitment to the US Congress that US willingness to phase out the MFA be linked directly to achievement of effective market access in individual countries. The US complained in this connection of some of the exporting countries raising their import tariffs (though still below their bound ceiling levels). The US also complained of circumvention by the quotas by some countries through transhipment and put the figure at some $600 million against an overall import of $44 billion. However, Colombia as Chair of the International Textiles and Clothing Bureau, rejected the US efforts to link its implementation of its ATC commitments and phase-out of MFA to market access for its own products, and said there was no such link set in the ATC. On the circumvention issue, Colombia said the ATC had laid out the mechanism to deal with it and some careful provisions and procedures. The Colombian complained of the arbitrary way the US was applying its rules of origin. Hong Kong, Pakistan, India, Thailand and Korea were among those who spoke rejecting the linkage now sought to be established between improved market access and the dismantling of the MFA quotas. All of them rejected the US efforts to establish sectoral reciprocity (as when the US complained of one member exporting to the US 87 times more of textiles than it imported from the US. The US also called for exporting countries accelerating their tariff reductions, since on average their tariffs were higher than that of the US. "While high tariffs often prohibit imports," quotas often allow certainty of market access. India quickly responded by telling the US that this would be kept in mind when India would be negotiating in another forum -- a reference to the BOP consultations that India is due to have. In BOP consultations, the US and other industrial countries press developing countries to give up quotas and use high tariffs. Several of the Third World countries noted that the WTO Committee on Market access had not reported any single instance of a commitment not being carried out, and the US charge was baseless. Pakistan noted that the US figures of circumvention -- a $200 million worth of imports compared to total imports of textile and clothing of the value of $44 billion -- showed that circumvention amounted to just about 0.2 percent of the imports and the complaint was disproportionate. The EU, which also has a paper about getting improved market access and about circumvention made a short presentation.