Careful listeners: Secretary for Commerce, Industry & Technology John Tsang (second left) and WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy (second right).

Over 1,000 non-government firms have been accredited for the World Trade Organisation's 6th Ministerial Conference to be held in Hong Kong, setting a WTO record, Secretary for Commerce, Industry & Technology John Tsang says.

The Hong Kong conference will claim another first, in being the first time accredited NGO representatives and delegates will be housed under the same roof.

Speaking at the NGO Roundtable Forum today, Mr Tsang said the Government is committed to enabling everyone, including those with dissenting voices, to be heard.

Attending the same forum, WTO new Director-General Pascal Lamy hoped fruitful results can be achieved at the Hong Kong Ministerial, otherwise the Doha negotiations will unlikely be concluded in 2006.

Agriculture key

Mr Tsang said agriculture is the key issue of the negotiations.

"Trade in agricultural products accounts only for a relatively small proportion of world trade at about 8%. But that does not tell the whole story. For some of the smaller economies, their meagre export is all they have got. For some of these economies, they have a single product and they have no other source of income, other than that single agricultural product they produce. We need to safeguard the interests of these vulnerable economies."

Because of the scale of the world markets distortion, because of its importance to developed and developing countries alike, agriculture cuts across the traditional patterns of divisions and alliances within the WTO. As a result, while the Doha Development Agenda is the broadest yet devised for a multilateral negotiation, progress in all other areas depends to an unprecedented degree on progress in this single area.

"The 'development dimension' of the Doha Development Agenda embraces more than just agriculture. I have focused only on Agriculture today, because firstly, it is of such fundamental importance to poverty reduction and economic development for so many of the less developed members of the global community and, secondly, it has become the choke point in the negotiations."

Difficult task

In two months' time, the whole WTO membership needs to flesh out the framework agreed in July 2004 on agriculture and non-agricultural market access, define the level of ambition for the services negotiations, agree on the next concrete steps for the rules negotiations, and properly reflect the development perspective in the outcome to all these negotiations.