Files
Abstract
The World Trade Organization (WTO) rules on public stockholding programmes have been under discussion among member countries for quite some time and are likely to be at the heart of the WTO Ministerial Conference in Buenos Aires in December 2017. This article proposes a new approach to advance toward a permanent solution on public stockholding programmes. This approach is based on splitting WTO rules into two components: i) the rules that specify how the support provided by public stocks should be calculated; and ii) the rules that define how WTO disciplines on support should be calculated. It focuses on the first, more technical, component. The author provides a systematic analysis of the biases in current WTO rules for estimating the support provided to farmers through public stockholding programmes and puts forward a proposal to correct them.