Negotiations for a global trade deal are likely to reach a breakthrough in June before being concluded before the end of the year, the head of the World Trade Organization said in an interview published on Friday.
“I would say June is more likely for an agreement over several essential points in order for the deal to conclude before the end of the year,” the WTO’s Pascal Lamy told the French newspaper Liberation.
Political and technical conditions had been aligned on the three key subjects of agricultural subsidies and agricultural and industrial custom tariffs, he said.
The WTO’s Doha negotiations for a global trade deal were launched in 2001 to help poor countries export more and to boost the global economy. But a string of deadlines have been missed due to deep differences over how to lower barriers to exports.
Without a deal soon, the changeover of administrations in Washington and Brussels in 2009 risk causing several more years of delay, adding to concerns that support for free trade is giving way to protectionism as economic growth slows.
(Reporting by Tamora Vidaillet and Brian Rohan; Editing by Catherine Evans)
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