Countries united in subsidy battle

Press, 28 August 1986, Page 3

Countries united in subsidy battle

NZPA-AAP Cairns New Zealand, with the 13 other rural exporter nations meeting in Cairns this week, has issued a strong declaration of unity in the battle against agricultural production and export subsidies. The Australian Trade Minister, Mr John Dawkins, who is chairing the meeting, said the document released yesterday afternoon would become known as the Cairns Dclaration. He said it marked the beginning of a new alliance which would fight for a better deal for farmers. Ministers of the Fair Traders in Agriculture called for “the removal of market access barriers, substantial reductions of agricultural subsidies and the elimination, within an agreed period, of subsidies affecting agricultural trade.”

The 14 nations have been involved in intense

negotiations for the last 2i/2 days as a forerunner to a new round of multilateral trade negotiations due to begin in Uruguay next month.

They have been trying to find common ground for a unified position against the United States and European Community agricultural production and trade subsidies.

Agricultural commodities have generally been excluded from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which has allowed the rural trade war between the United States and the European Community to escalate.

“Ministers seriously question the value of a new round (of trade negotiations) which failed to solve the longstanding problems in agricultural trade,” said a statement The Ministers have agreed to meet at Punta del Este in Uruguay before the G.A.T.T. meeting next month and then

meet regularly to oversee any progress made in Uruguay.

The statement also said the Ministers would ensure that the problems of world agricultural trade remained high on the agenda for international action. The New Zealand Government could be asked to finance a study of farm subsidy programmes in the country. The president of the Australian Farmers’ Federation, Mr fan McLachlan, said the suggestion for the study of programmes in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Argentina came up in discussions. “The suggestion is that perhaps we should get our Governments to support a series of independent studies into the intersectoral costs of all the major agricultural programmes to see who is paying, the effect of one sector on to another, and so on,” Mr McLachlan said.