The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), a leading sub-regional body in Africa, has rapped the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement reached recently in Geneva, describing it as "bad news for Africa."

There is one piece of 'good news' coming from the just ended meeting in Geneva on the WTO talks. The news is that the impasse on the collapsed Cancun WTO Ministerial Meeting is now set aside. Otherwise, the rest of the agreement text is 'bad news' in the sense that it provides a framework for negotiations for which the 'devil' is in the details," the Lusaka-based COMESA secretariat said in a statement issued Tuesday.

COMESA, with 19 member countries and a total population of 385 million, welcomed the agreement reached in Geneva on July 31 by which developed countries pledge to cut their level of agricultural subsidies by 20 percent.

"But the bad news is that the cut is not deep enough to enable Africa to be competitive and to remove the distortions. There is no clear timetable for the eventual elimination of subsidies," thestatement said.

The statement noted that in exchange for the 20 percent cut on subsidies, African economies will have to give further tariff cutson industrial products from developed economies.

"Perhaps more disturbing is elements included in the text, which provide for special and differential treatment for sensitiveproducts that developed countries can resort to. This will water down the text," it said.

The COMESA secretariat also charged that the Geneva agreement failed to satisfy Africa's request to treat cotton as a stand-alone issue.

On cotton, one of the most contentious issues in Cancun, the Geneva agreement says, "The General Council recognizes the importance of cotton for developing countries, especially LDC (least developed countries) . It will be addressed ambitiously, expeditiously and specifically, within the agriculture negotiations."

On the Doha Development Agenda (DDA), COMESA said the good newsis that developed countries dropped their demand to include investment, transparency in government procurement and competitionand that only trade facilitation will be included as part of the DDA.

The COMESA secretariat said the greatest challenge of the DDA is to live up to its promise in Doha to make it a truly development agenda.

It said the Geneva agreement is vague on development issues such as commodities; trade, debt and finance; and trade and technology transfer.

COMESA also charged that the decision making process in the WTOis not transparent, nor democratic and lends itself to arm twisting, especially in draft text writing.

COMESA also expressed concern that elections in the United States will have an adverse impact on the DDA.

"This is an election year in the United States of America, and with all the good intentions in the world, it would not be prudentto make unpopular decisions to the electorate," the statement said.

Source: Xinhua