Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala urged WTO members on 15 October to “continue to be constructive” in addressing outstanding issues on the WTO work agenda such as agriculture, fisheries subsidies, development and dispute settlement reform so that concrete outcomes can be achieved.
She spoke in her capacity as Chair of the Trade Negotiations Committee at a meeting of the WTO’s General Council.
“We need to continue to be constructive and to keep in our sights that we are here to achieve outcomes,” DG Okonjo-Iweala told members, citing positive discussions on several issues under negotiation.
On agriculture, the DG said she was grateful for the positive discussion that took place at the Trade Negotiations Committee meeting on 10 October, which focused on advancing the agriculture negotiations.
The DG said she, the General Council chair — Ambassador Petter Ølberg (Norway) — and the chair of the agriculture negotiations — Ambassador Alparslan Acarsoy (Türkiye) — would be meeting with members shortly in order to respond to some of the questions posed during the meeting and find an agreement on a process for moving the negotiations forward.
“We can't accept this important negotiation to be stalemated,” the DG said. “It's been so for two and a half decades … let's try and take it very seriously and find a way through.”
On fisheries subsidies, the DG welcomed progress on acceptances of the Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies concluded in 2022 and noted that only 25 more acceptances are needed to ensure entry into force of the Agreement, with a number of additional acceptances expected in the days and weeks ahead.
She also underlined that members were “almost there” with regards to a deal on the second part of the Agreement, which aims to address subsidies contributing to overcapacity and overfishing.
