Brazil’s powerful agribusiness sector called for the country to step away from an alliance with India and China in World Trade Organization (WTO) talks next week to concentrate on securing immediate farm trade deals.“The most productive sector in the Brazilian economy must not be held back by the drive to secure a greater trade opening for less competitive sectors,” the Permanent Forum for Agricultural Negotiations (PFAN), a farm industry grouping, said in a public letter to the government yesterday. Trade and foreign ministers from around the world are to hold talks at the WTO headquarters in Geneva from next Monday with the aim of further liberalising trade.The continuation of the Doha Round of negotiations has been held up for four years by a conflict between developed and developing countries over opening farm and industrial sectors to imports.Brazil, the co-leader of the G20 group of developing nations in the talks alongside India, has declined to seek bilateral deals for its farm and agribusiness trade while it pursues a broader multilateral trade deal in WTO talks. Brasilia has said it will maintain the solidarity of the G20 — which also includes China — in the negotiations with Europe and the US. PFAN president Gilman Viana Rodrigues said that the strategy benefited India and China more than Brazil.
