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Media release
Australian Minister for Trade, Mark Vaile
4 September 2001 / MVT121/2001
XXIInd Cairns Group Ministerial Meeting: Special Guest
Trade Minister Mark Vaile today welcomed the Kenyan Trade and Industry Minister, Nicholas Biwott, as special guest to the 22nd Cairns Group Ministerial Meeting in Punta del Este, Uruguay.
"The attendance of Minister Biwott shows that our message of reform is increasingly being taken up by developing countries. The Kenyan Minister is making a significant contribution to our meeting."
"The interest Kenya has in cooperating with the Cairns Group is clear. Agricultural liberalisation is a key development issue which the rich OECD are resisting. Kenya has been leading the developing country push for reform and has submitted constructive negotiating proposals to the WTO agriculture negotiations. It wants to work with the Cairns Group to press the case for reform," Mr Vaile said.
The Cairns Group, with its 14 developing country members, has close links to many developing country members of the WTO, including Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria and India. For many of these countries reform of agriculture is essential for their economic growth and stability. ABARE has estimated that the global gains from a 50 per cent reduction in agricultural support levels would amount to a US$53 billion increase in GDP in 2010.
"Developing countries like Kenya would directly benefit from subsidy reductions. Their own subsidies to domestic farmers are too low to be affected by reduction commitments, and they don't use export subsidies. They have nothing to lose from the Cairns Group's call for substantive reductions in tariffs and domestic support, and the elimination of export subsidies," Mr Vaile said.
"Developing country farmers have to compete in the most highly distorted of trading sectors. The current WTO negotiations provide them with perhaps the only opportunity to correct these distortions. Increasingly, developing countries understand the stakes they have in the agriculture negotiations, and are lending their voices, as Kenya is doing, to the campaign for reform."
Contact: James Baker (Uruguay) 0011-54-11 4539-615
Local Date: Friday, 21-Nov-2008 16:25:51 EST