WTO finalising key fishing, Covid jab texts at summit

Geneva, June 11: Longsought WTO agreements on fisheries subsidies and a Covid-19 vaccine patent waiver moved a step closer to completion Saturday after negotiators finalised texts for ministerial review, but significant obstacles remained in hammering out a final deal.

Diplomats have been in round-the-clock talks to hammer out texts on several thorny topics before the World Trade Organisation’s first highlevel meeting in five years, where trade ministers and officials from 164 countries have four days starting Sunday to try and get the negotiations across the finish line.

It takes place against the backdrop of the UkraineRussia war and fears of a global food crisis as a result of the conflict.

The global trade body announced in the early hours Saturday that a draft text on a long elusive deal banning subsidies favouring overfishing had been handed over to the ministers.

They will be tasked with ironing out the final sticking points towards a deal decades in the making.

The success of WTO’s 12th ministerial conference will largely hinge on whether they succeed.

“Not every issue has been resolved. This is a draft agreement and there remain some issues that members have not agreed to yet,” acknowledged Colombian ambassador Santiago Wills, who chairs the WTO fisheries subsidies negotiations.

But he said months of intense negotiations had made it possible to present “a clean solution” to some issues that had long “appeared intractable”.

The WTO takes decisions by consensus, making agreements all the harder to reach.