The government ministers belonging to West Africa's biggest cotton producing countries met in Burkina Faso to plan out their demands on reduced subsidies. This will be followed by the trade negotiators meet to be held in Geneva to further the negotiations that had suffered a serious standoff at Doha round trade talks.

Several pressing issues will be addressed during the meet. These include cuts on subsidies in countries like the US and Europe and what industrial and business gains or disasters it would yield to the stake holders.

The foreign agricultural subsidies model has drawn lot of flak from cotton traders representing chief cotton growing areas of Chad, Mali, Benin and Burkina Faso in West Africa. They contend that the subsidies worked against the prospects of cotton growers and resulted in dipping cotton prices in the Global market.

One of the representative of the cotton traders felt that justice be restored to the African traders. He reiterated that the African traders were looking for free market and fair play that didn’t allow violation of rules laid by the world trade organization.

However the market analysts feel that the near bankrupt situation of cotton growers has other major factors as triggers and not the stalled talks at Doha alone. Weather, stiff competition from other upcoming sectors like synthetic fibers, more cotton supply from Pakistan, China and India and poor technology are touted to be the triggering factors.
The Commerce minister of Mali, Choguel Maiga said that he was concerned about the cotton growers of Africa as they were suffering more than their American counterparts. Incidentally Mali is Sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest cotton producer.
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Statistics show that 15 million West Africans depend entirely on cotton farming. It is also observed by the minister that it is not easy either for the US government to cut subsidies because of the strong opposition posed by the US cotton lobby.

Meanwhile the US has already cut the cotton subsidies by half, amounting to $22.5 billion. This is due to the case made out by Brazil at WTO in its attempt to shield the interest of African cotton growers. The subsidy cut will be forced into action in a phased manner spread over six years. The world trade ruling in this regard, which is expected later this year will determine whether the US is complying with the regulations of WTO in absolute terms or taking liberties to pay subsidies to its own growers causing an imbalance in the global market dynamics.

The Geneva meet is expected to last till this month end.