Positive step—M.P.

Press, 15 May 1987, Page 9

Positive step—M.P.

Reports from this week’s O.E.C.D. meeting in Paris showed that another positive step was being taken on the path of agricultural reform, said the Minister of Overseas Trade, Mr Moore. Agricultural products had been the main item on the agenda and the meeting fitted well into New Zealand’s over-all strategy. The Synthesis Report on Agriculture, which was being discussed in Paris, was the culmination of many months of work, Mr Moore said. It was thorough, persuasive, and tough on protectionism. More important, the report proposed sound analytical bases for the discussion of longer-term changes in agricultural policies. These would be of value in the new G.A.T.T. round of multilateral trade negotiations.

Mr Moore said recent progress in the free trade debate had been encouraging, and New Zea-

land had a three-part strategy: • For a long time it had been among the most active of the countries preparing the way for this crucial series of trade talks.

• The first time the seriousness of the problem had been acknowledged at a summit meeting had been at Tokyo 11 months ago. • The recent G.A.T.T. Ministerial meeting in Uruguay had provided a good negotiating mandate on agriculture. Every aspect of the agricultural produce trade crisis was up for discussion, Mr Moore said. The scope for significant and lasting trade was there at last.

New Zealand had the support of the United States, which had placed real progress on agriculture on the top of its “wish list” from the round.

Last month’s Taupo meeting of world trade

Ministers had helped to reaffirm the central place of agriculture in the G.A.T.T. talks, Mr Moore said.

This week’s talks in Paris had shown that an increasingly hard line was emerging in the O.E.C.D. on the need for rational policies on agricultural production.

Next week Mr Moore will attend a Ministerial meeting in Ottawa of the Cairns Group — 14 free traders in agriculture — called to evaluate the O.E.C.D. meeting in Paris and to review progress in the G.A.T.T. talks.

The Cairns Group must now consolidate its gains; it must maintain unity, continue to advance constructive proposals, and work to widen the constituency of support for change in domestic agricultural policies, Mr Moore said.

Ultimately, everything depended on progress in the G.A.T.T. talks. New Zealand had no intention

of waiting the four to five years needed to complete the round of negotiations before it saw any improvement in the rules governing agricultural trade, he said. For that reason, New Zealand was supporting the North American concept of an “early harvest” from the G.A.T.T. round.

This approach would see implementation in 1988 — about two years on from the Uruguay meeting — of a balanced package of agreements on issues such as agriculture, procedures for settling disputes and trade in counterfeit goods, he said. Agreements reached in the early stages of negotiations could, therefore, be implemented immediately rather than at the conclusion of the round two or three years further on.

It was this approach in particular that he would push at next week’s Ottawa meeting, Mr Moore said.