At an informal World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting in Kenya, Secretary for Commerce, Industry & Technology John Tsang says participants have a clearer idea on what to achieve in non-agricultural market access.

The meeting is a roadmap to the Sixth WTO Ministerial Conference. Mr Tsang noted said the importance of services to the round has also been underlined.

The next milestone meeting will be the Paris informal ministerial meeting on the margins of the OECD ministerial meeting in early May.

Ministers may need to meet again sometime in July to remove any remaining roadblocks and have a reality check on what can practically be achieved in the ministerial meeting in Hong Kong in December.

"After summer, we would need to work very hard at both the ministerial and official levels to minimise the number of issues that require our attention in Hong Kong. Optimistically, this would mean that we could focus our energy on resolving at the ministerial conference only a few difficult outstanding issues," Mr Tsang added.