Azerbaijan, Baku, 30 June /corr. Trend I.Khalilova / Holding the second meeting of VI round of Azerbaijan Government's talks with the working group of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2008 depends on the acceleration of the process of preparing responses to the WTO participating countries, said the head of the negotiation group of Azerbaijan, Deputy Foreign Minister Mahmud Mammadguliyev. Although today only the USA and European Union (EU) presented their questions, it can not affect preparations for the next meeting because they are key players and partners in the talks in entrance to the WTO. Therefore, much depend on reaching agreement with them.
The fifth meeting of the working group took place on 5-7 May in Geneva, after which the WTO Secretariat had to form the collection of questions from the organization member nations by 30 May. Besides the answers to their questions, the Government of Azerbaijan was charged with obligation to prepare report about the progress in the process of negotiations on Azerbaijan's entrance to WTO.
Azerbaijan tried to join the WTO under the status of a developing country as it would gain 10% access to subsidies for agriculture. According to the WTO requirements, the country can preserve 10% of subsidies from the GDP in the agriculture, if Azerbaijan will be accepted to the organization in status of the developing country, but if as developed country, then the size of subsidies must be lowered to 5%.
Due to the plans of Government to expand volume of subsidies for the agriculture for ensuring food security Azerbaijan's Minister of Economic Development, Heydar Babayev, did not exclude the possibility of this process during negotiations with the WTO member countries. Babayev said earlier that Azerbaijan is not going to make concessions and during the negotiation process, is prepared to achieve preserving volume of subsidies for the agrarian sector at the level not below 10%.
For the development of agrarian sector, for the fourth time the Government plans to prolong tax vacations in order to create conditions for farmers for competition in the market and not to allow price increase for the agricultural products. According to the data, in the past three years, the volume of subsidies in the first year was at the level of 49%, which was connected with removal of all debts in the agricultural sphere, and during the subsequent years it was lowered to 13-14%.
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