Japan to feed political will, break rigidity in free trade talks
MCOT News
Japan to feed political will, break rigidity in free trade talks
7 November 2009
TOKYO, Nov 7 (Kyodo) - Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said Friday that Japan must feed political will to break the country’s rigidity that has been seen in some of its talks with other economies for trade and investment liberalization.
The comment came after the government held the first session of a new committee joined by four ministers related to negotiations for bilateral or multilateral free trade agreements and with global liberalization talks under the World Trade Organization.
’’I heard from many and (concluded that) there may be room where political will could work a little bit more,’’ Okada told reporters.
He also said that even as the Japanese government stresses the importance of free trade in general, such aspiration tends to be weakened at the level of individual negotiators, some of whom appear inclined to protect the interest of the jurisdiction or industries they oversee.
The joint panel is made up of the foreign, trade, finance and farm ministers.
Okada said they plan to hold a meeting every month, and that their deputies will meet twice in a month.
Okada has recently showed his persistence over a possible FTA with the European Union, which is strongly backed by Japanese business leaders.
Tokyo is still in the early stages of studying the possibility of a free trade pact with the 27-member union, having launched a private-public joint study panel ahead of formal intergovernmental talks.
Last month, trade officials from Japan and Australia agreed there is a need to accelerate their efforts to strike an FTA as their talks have become stalled two and a half years after their commencement. Some Japanese officials have admitted that the stalemate is due mainly to Japan’s reluctance to open its agricultural sector to cheaper imports from Australia.
Japan is also in similar talks with India, South Korea, Peru and a group of Middle East countries but has yet to reach a breakthrough. Meanwhile it has concluded FTAs with such countries as Singapore, Mexico and Chile, with whom Tokyo suffered little friction over farm trade.
The WTO, struggling to make tangible progress in its eight-year-old Doha Round liberalization talks, will hold a ministerial meeting in later November and early December.
Okada said the government’s newly launched committee will gather ahead of the WTO meeting and confirm Japan’s basic positions.
Broad agreement has been reached in many areas of the Doha talks, launched in 2001 and originally scheduled to be concluded in 2005. But the negotiations have been stalled due chiefly to differences between developed and developing countries over how much to cut farm subsidies and industrial and agricultural tariffs. (Kyodo)
