Keeping cyberspace duty-free

Commerce is growing rapidly on the internet

The Internet will remain a duty-free area for yet another year. Trade negotiators from around the world agreed during a meeting in Geneva not to introduce any customs duties for products like services, software or pictures, which are provided over the internet.

Internet commerce could then became part of a wide-ranging round of trade talks, as ministers from around the globe prepare to push for a world of open markets in the next century.

The decision on electronic commerce, which could be extended and perhaps become permanent, was taken on the fringes of a three-day ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) ending later in the day.

The United States, the world's leading provider of internet services, had been pressing for a longer exemption period.

The WTO is expected to begin talks on a new trade agreement next year, but American negotiators say that previous rounds of trade negotiations took too long. The last set of free-trade talks, the Uruguay round, lasted seven years.

The US government wants an accelerated process to bring down remaining trade barriers in services and agriculture, which caused so many difficulties in the past.

And the USA joined the Cairns group of major agricultural exporters (which includes Australia, Argentina and Canada) in calling for faster progress by the EU in dismantling agricultural subsidies under the current agreement.

In an separate development, the US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky also warned Brussels of a 'very substantial trade row' over imports of genetically engineered corn which the EU has been seeking to ban.