According to Tran Quoc Khanh, Director of the Multilateral Trade Department under the Ministry of Trade, the Doha round is a comprehensive negotiation which covers many issues, including the market opening for industrial and agricultural products, agriculture subsidisation cutting, WTO rules improvement and service-relating commitments.

Mr Khanh said that the result of the Doha round will have impact on Vietnam, which is now a WTO member.

Meanwhile, experts have voiced their concerns about the possible impacts which may cause harms to Vietnam’s agriculture.

Nguyen Thi Hong, an expert from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) said: “What we are anxious about is whether Vietnam has to pay twice for WTO. As Vietnam joins WTO later than many other countries, it must make more commitments for the joining. It remains unclear if Vietnam will have to make commitments on further cutting taxes with the Doha round”.

Agriculture subsidisation is one of the core issues for the Doha round. There are two scenarios for Vietnam’s agriculture. In the first one, Vietnam will not have to further cut the taxes on farm produce, based on the provision applied to new members, and the provision applied to switching economies and developing countries. With the second scenario, Vietnam will have to cut taxes further to open the market more widely, and this would be a big problem for Vietnam’s agriculture.

The drawback for Vietnam now is that Vietnam has made high commitments in agriculture when joining WTO. It has undertaken to totally remove the subsidisation for export right after joining WTO, while other members will only have to do that in 2013. Besides, Vietnam has committed to reduce taxes more sharply, and it cannot apply special safeguard measures as many other countries can.

In other fields, industry, for example, Vietnam has committed to cut 9,400 categories of tax by 24% on average compared to the current level. Vietnam’s industries will face a lot of difficulties and its products will have to compete fiercely with imported products.

The group of civil electronic products, for example, which is being protected at high level with the tax rates of 30-50%, will suffer from the tax reduction roadmap as these products have low added value (Vietnamese producers simply make assembling in Vietnam). Textile and garment, footwear and processed farm produce will also face a lot of challenges.

Source: VietnamNet