New Delhi, July 27: With a draft agenda failing to clear the air on contentious issues, including Singapore, Agriculture and TRIPS and Public Health, the prospects of breakthrough on some crucial issues at the mini ministerial of World Trade Organisation (WTO) beginning on Monday at Montreal appear very bleak. "There is very little chance there would be any forward movement at Montreal especially in wake of the draft agenda for the Cancun being very skeletal," trade experts said here. It has kept open virtually every area that WTO members negotiated indicating that there was very little progress on contentious issues and this would be reflected at the meeting.

With just four weeks remaining for the Ministerial conference at Cancun in Mexico, there was very little time for narrowing down extremely wide and contentious differences in agriculture, four heavily contexted Singapore issues: investment, competition, government procurement and trade facilitation, trade experts said.
"All the contentious issues have been kept open and it has no way made any attempt to clear the air," they said. By leaving the highly problematic Singapore issues open, the draft has put burden on majority of the developing nations including India which have been opposing negotiations.
TRIPS and Public Health and Special and Differential treatment, which are of major concerns for developing countries, too remain where they are and Implementation issues have virtually being sidelined in the draft. Bureau Report