Non-Agricultural Market Access

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The Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA) negotiations are based on the Doha mandate of 2001 that calls for a reduction or elimination in tariff peaks, tariff escalation, high tariffs, and non-tariff barriers, particularly on goods that are of export value and therefore of interest to developing countries.

NAMA refers to all those products that are not covered by the Agreement on Agriculture or the negotiations on services. In practice, NAMA products include manufacturing products, fuels and mining products, fish and fish products, and forestry products.

The NAMA negotiations have been considered important by the WTO because NAMA products account for almost 90% of the world's merchandise exports.

After the Doha Declaration was adopted in 2001, negotiations on NAMA formally began in January 2002 after the creation of the Negotiating Group on Market Access (NGMA). In the beginning, negotiations on non-agricultural products were to be concluded by 1 January 2005. However, this deadline was missed and the negotiations are still under way.

Pierre Louis Girard, Chairman of the NGMA, made the first proposal in 2003 before the Cancun Ministerial about the modalities regarding how to take the process forward. However, Girard's proposal faced severe opposition from the developed members, as it proposed a smaller tariff cut than the one that the developed member countries had been advocating.

However, by the time the Cancun Ministerial was held in 2003, the second text on NAMA was opposed by the developing countries for moving away from the first NAMA draft, especially by the G90 and African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.

The deadlock on NAMA negotiations was broken in July 2004, which was the first agreement amongst the countries after the collapse of Cancun. The July 2004 agreement also laid the framework for establishing future modalities.

Tariff Reduction: methodology for reducing tariffs is at the core of the negotiations over NAMA. However, here too the developed and developing countries are divided over the extent to which tariff reductions will be carried out. At the heart of the debate is the reconciliation of the process of tariff reduction and the need to use tariffs as a policy tool, primarily by developing countries interested in protecting emerging industries for developmental purposes^[1].

A tariff binding is a ceiling above which a member country cannot apply a tariff, thus representing the maximum tariff than can be applied by a member.

The NAMA negotiators have opted in favour of a formula approach to tariff reductions rather than a linear approach. The Swiss formula, which has been propounded by the developed countries such as the US, the EC countries, Norway, and Japan, proposes to cut tariffs steeply without taking account of the existing tariff profile of a country.

The modified Swiss formula, on the other hand, takes into account the tariff profile of the countries while carrying out tariff reductions. This approach is supported by the developing countries.