 
   ./.  WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  WT/GC/81 
6 August 2004 
 (04-3351) 
General Council 
27 July and 1 August 2004 Original:   English 
 
 
 
STATEMENT BY THE PHILIPPINES 
 
 
 The following statement made by the Philippi nes at the General Council meeting on 27 July 
and 1 August 2004 under "agenda item 11", is being circulated to Members at the request of that 
delegation.  
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 We find ourselves at a most critical juncture in the work programme we undertook for ourselves at Doha nearly three years ago.  Not only do we have the burden at this point of trying to accomplish what had eluded us in Cancún last year, but we also have the responsibility, given the 
worsening state of developing countries’ economies,  of ensuring that the multilateral trading system 
that we are evolving through these negotiations rema in true to the developmental spirit of the 
negotiating mandate we agreed upon at Doha.  Indeed, paragraph 2 of the Doha Ministerial 
Declaration provides:  “The majority of WTO Me mbers are developing countries. We seek to place 
their needs and interests at the heart of the Work Programme adopted in this Declaration.” 
  We are behoved to remind ourselves that de veloping countries agreed to launch this 
negotiating round on the premise that the existing im balance with respect to the benefits obtained 
from participation in the multilateral trading system  will be rectified in these negotiations.  We 
recognised that the application of equal rules to une ven economic situations resulted in an inequitable 
distribution of benefits derived from such multilatera l trade rules.  The developing world thus placed 
its faith on the promise that the Doha work prog ramme would address this fundamental inequity.  
 
 The failure in Cancún showed that the direction of the proposed work programme would not 
live up to this promise. If we are not careful, we may again forget this unfulfilled promise.  Let us 
keep this promise of the Doha Round – that th e multilateral trading system will rapidly deliver 
development and prosperity to the mass of humanity – foremost in our minds during these 
negotiations. Otherwise, the price we , and this institution, will pay in an adverse eventuality should be 
enough to make trading partners re-think their approach. 
  As we peruse the General Council decision, we  hope it can provide to us the guidance for our 
subsequent work on modalities for negotiations.  Fo r the Philippines, we shall be guided by the 
following understandings of certain  provisions we are adopting: 
 
 In agriculture, on domestic support, we unders tand paragraph 11 as maintaining the right of 
developing countries that have allocated or intend to allocate most
 of their de minimis support for 
subsistence and resource-poor farmers to be fully exempt from any reduction commitments.  We trust 
that this paragraph affirms the policy space for developing countries to pursue their developmental 
goals and aspirations. 
 WT/GC/81 
Page 2  
 
  On Special Products, we are proud to stand with our G-33 colleagues and our group 
coordinator, Indonesia, in having paragraph 41 rec ognise fully the concept of Special Products and the 
fundamental right of developing country Members to  designate products as vital to their food security, 
livelihood security and rural development needs.  
 We further understand and underscore the wisdom of the GC decision that assures that SP 
will be entitled to the most favourable and flexible  treatment. SP stands separate and distinct from 
sensitive products.    In non-agriculture market acc ess negotiations, time and again we have given vent to the 
situation of developing countries, who, having believed in the promise liberalisation leads to, 
unilaterally and aggressively pursued tariff reducti on programmes in previous years, only to find 
themselves confronted not only with serious repercu ssions in affected domestic industries, but at a 
definite disadvantage under the proposed treatment  of unbound tariffs contained in the suggested 
framework for negotiations.  While we were w illing to bind these presently unbound tariffs, we 
emphasised that there must be flexibilities for deve loping countries to (i) bind these at levels higher 
than what is proposed in the present Annex B, and ( ii) to exempt a greater percentage, at least 10 per 
cent, from binding.    Viewed in this context, we wish to emphasi se for the record the cl ear shared understanding 
among Members that the framework we are adopting in  Annex B is not a fully agreed text.  Several 
elements are not agreed upon, which will need to be negotiated and agreed upon in the next phase of 
negotiating the modalities for NAMA.  Foremost  of these for the Philippines is the entire
 notion of 
how unbound tariffs will be treated in these negotiations, and the percen tage of products that can be 
exempted from binding.  
 In Services, we note and understand that the Ma y 2005 date for submission of revised offers, 
which was belatedly added to the text of the GC decision, is not
, as stated by the Chairman, 
mandatory and as such, is merely indicative.  From our perspective, such date will more likely than 
not be impractical for many Members, particularly  for the 50 or so developing countries which have 
as yet not been able to table initial offers on ac count of serious capacity constraints.  Such a 
benchmark, even if non-legally binding, would be  akin to setting a deadline which everyone knows 
will not and cannot be respected by many Members.  
  Mr. Chairman, the Philippines, like many other delegations, is not fully satisfied with the 
draft frameworks that we have before us today.  However, we do note that the fundamental concerns 
we raised in our statement at the previous Inform al HOD meeting earlier in the week pertaining to the 
blue box in agriculture, de minimis for developing countries, special products, differential export taxes 
and issues related to the treatment of unbound tariffs and flexibilities for developing countries in the 
NAMA ‘vehicle’ have all been subjected to intens ive consultations and were given some form of 
rectification in the final draft.  Therefore in the spirit of constructive e ngagement and for purposes of 
helping move these negotiations towards the prom ise of a development-oriented agenda, the 
Philippines accepts the decision and the annexed frameworks as a basis for Members’ future work. 
May we express the Philippines’ commendation and a ppreciation to the Director-General and the 
Chairman of the General Council, the facilitators and the Members for their hard work, persistence 
and professionalism in finalising this important decision.    
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