The Twenty-Eighth Meeting of the Negotiating Group on Market Access (NGMA) was held in Puebla, Mexico from 21 to 25 July 2003. The meeting was chaired by Felipe Jaramillo of Colombia. Manuel Díaz of the Dominican Republic served as Vice Chair. The following 21 countries were in attendance: Argentina, Barbados, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, United States, and Uruguay. The Tripartite Committee provided technical support to this meeting.

The NGMA adopted the agenda attached hereto. All items on the agenda were satisfactorily covered.

The Group discussed the results of the last meeting of the FTAA Trade Negotiations Committee, which was held recently in El Salvador. The Group discussed substantive issues related to the origin regime, customs procedures related to the origin regime, and safeguard measures. The Group also agreed on a format for the presentation of initial tariff offer profiles in order to provide information to the Chair on the progress of the negotiations to date. Additionally, the Group initiated the process of reformatting the chapters under its mandate by adapting them to the template approved by the TNC.

The Tripartite Committee informed the Group on the status of inputs to the Hemispheric Data Base (HDB), the submission of nomenclature conversion tables; and of other notifications. The Inter-American Development Bank, as a member of the Tripartite Committee, indicated that it would provide training courses on issues related to the negotiations to those delegations that so desire, and that it is able to provide technical and financial support in the preparation of tables to correlate nomenclatures of countries that have implemented the 2002 Harmonized System.

The Group acknowledged receipt of eight civil society contributions forwarded by the Committee of Government Representatives on the Participation of Civil Society to the NGMA. Once again, the delegations took note of the number and quality of the contributions received. These contributions reflect the interest that civil society has in the FTAA negotiations and in the transparency of the negotiating process. The delegations agreed to continue taking all of the contributions into account when formulating their negotiating positions.

The Group’s next meeting will be held in Puebla, Mexico from 15-19 September 2003.
 

1. Approval of Agenda
2. General Issues
3. Methods and Modalities for Tariff Negotiations
4. Text on Origin Regime
5. Text on Origin-Related [Customs] Procedures
6. Text on Safeguards
7. Civil Society Contributions
8. Agenda for the next meeting
9. Other business