6th Ministerial, Hong Kong 2005

Nearly four months after suspension, World Trade Organization Chief Pascal Lamy on Friday signaled the need to restart what he called the 'process' of negotiations in all areas of the Doha Development Agenda 'single undertaking'.

The proposed deals of the Doha Round negotiations to date would cause developing countries generally to incur much more costs than the negligible benefits that would go to a few, and the present pause in the negotiations should be welcomed so that a rethinking of the negotiations can be undertaken.

Brasilia, Kuala Lumpur, Rio de Janeiro, Cairns, Batam, Geneva, Brussels, Washington, are only some of the places where high level meetings aimed at restarting the stalled Doha trade negotiations have taken place since the de facto suspension of negotiations on July 27. With different groups of countries involved in various discussions with changing priorities, interested groups and citizens around the world are having a hard time following what negotiators are offering. Here is an update from Geneva on what has happened over the last two months and some developments to monitor.

Trade envoys from a score of countries are making intense efforts to find the 'right spark' to reignite the suspended Doha Development Agenda trade negotiations soon.

The following quotes are taken from recent academic analysis of the estimated gains and losses from restarting the Doha Round of WTO negotiations, including the EU

An interesting debate took place at the Trade and Development Board (TDB) of UNCTAD on the question of "policy space", on the imbalances of existing multilateral rules in some areas and their absence in others, and the impact of this on developing countries' ability to formulate national development policies.