The success of the WTO Negotiations (Doha Development Agenda) is essential for the world economy to grow and for developed and developing countries alike to maximize their national welfare through the improvement of the business environment.
Nippon Keidanren is supporting Japan's multi-layered trade policy through bilateral and regional liberalization in parallel with multilateral liberalization and at the same time recognizes that the multilateral approach based upon the WTO is the foundation of the international trading system. We strongly urge the WTO Members to bring the negotiations back on track.
Learning from the experience of the Cancún Ministerial Conference, the WTO Members need to continue their efforts for the acceleration of the negotiations with new ideas and flexibility. In that sense, we feel that urgent steps are necessary to remedy the fact that the General Council meeting last December practically postponed the substantive negotiations. We want the WTO Members to resume the real negotiations immediately based upon the 'Derbez Text' proposed at the Cancún Ministerial Conference (JOB(03)/150/Rev.2).
Nippon Keidanren maintains the position that, to make progress on negotiations, it is essential to develop the negotiation on agricultural trade and to resolve the issues on developing countries. Therefore, Nippon Keidanren urges the Members to make every effort to achieve this worthwhile goal.
In relation to the current progress of negotiations after the Cancún Ministerial Conference, Nippon Keidanren strongly emphasizes to WTO Members the need to achieve success in the following issues: (a) improving market access for non-agricultural products (formulas which apply for all Members and adoption of sectoral approaches in conjunction with these formulas), (b) launching negotiations on trade facilitation and concluding within the timeframe of DDA, (c) promoting trade in services negotiations (submission of the initial offers, improving substantially the level of national treatment and full liberalization of market access, liberalization of the movement of natural persons), (d) improvement of the antidumping agreements (concrete progress on the negotiations need to be realized), (e) liberalization and development of rules/commitments regarding IT and e-commerce.
Nippon Keidanren believes that the establishment of international investment rules within the WTO is important and upholds the position that pragmatic approaches related to the circumstances of the negotiations, including the consideration of plurilateral agreements by interested major developed and developing countries, should be seriously examined.
Nippon Keidanren urges the WTO Members to remain committed to the deadline of January 1, 2005 with a single-undertaking formula. We will continue to positively cooperate with the Japanese government, governments of other Members and industries all over the world to enable the negotiations to proceed and reach a successful conclusion.