MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mercosur requests WTO 16% expansion of sensitive goods

Mercosur will request this week before the World Trade Organization, WTO, a 16% expansion in the number of sensitive industrial goods to be excluded from the consolidated tariff expected to be agreed during the Doha Round negotiations, which to all practical effects will mean an overall drop in external tariffs for out of the region imports.

The request was agreed a few weeks ago by Mercosur full members, (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay) during technical meetings, and will be presented in Geneva by the Uruguayan delegation since this country currently holds the chair of the South American trade block. Although no details of the expanded list of exceptions was revealed, under current WTO conditions of the 9.000 industrial goods produced by Mercosur member countries, 10% of that list can apply for the description of "sensitive", as long as they don't represent more than 10% of imports. This means that 900 products can make up the list of exceptions, while the remaining 8.100 once the Doha Round agreement is reached will necessarily have to lower import tariffs. With the 16% request the list of exceptions should jump to 1.400 "sensitive" products, according to Uruguayan diplomatic sources. However those same sources revealed that it's uncertain what the reply will be since "initial reactions in the WTO have not been positive". What is certain is that if finally WTO accepts the request this will trigger another round of discussions inside Mercosur to see which products and from which countries are added to the list of exceptions. As to the overall tariff reduction currently under discussion Uruguay and Brazil support the stance of the non farm goods commission president Donald Stephenson who has proposed that Mercosur Common External Tariff be established at a maximum of 14%.