African perspectives on the green box measures

A major concern of African countries with regard to the implementation of the Agreement on Agriculture and green box measures is the need to ensure that the measures made recourse to indeed have no or minimal trade- or production-distorting effects. The need to instil discipline in the use of the green box measures has been a recurring theme in all of the proposals and statements made by African countries on the issue. African countries have made individual submissions on the green box measures or have joined developing countries from other regions to make submissions. One of the early views expressed by the African Group in the WTO on the green box measures is found in the Joint Proposal on the Negotiations on Agriculture presented by the Group in March 2001. It was proposed that the criteria for the green box should be tightened to ensure that measures that were employed had no or minimal trade- or production-distorting effects. The members of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) in 2002 noted the increase in the use of domestic support measures by developed countries because of box shifting. The appropriateness of decoupled support as a green box measure was raised in that submission. Egypt, Uganda and Zimbabwe presented a paper jointly with Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Sri Lanka and Honduras in which they identified direct decoupled payments and export credits and guarantees as measures which must be removed from the green box.