TFIA's WTO submission
TFIA executive director Ashley Van Krieken told Ragtrader the council had a number of concerns that it hoped would be addressed by the sixth World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial conference - scheduled in Hong Kong from December 13 to 18.
A key issue of the submission was the transparency on non-tariff barriers, Van Krieken said.
"The conference represents a unique opportunity to clearly delineate parameters concerning non-tariff barriers for WTO member countries.
"What we would like to achieve is some sort of transparency on non-tariff barriers as this issue has needed discussion for a long time and we would like to avoid a situation where the WTO is still discussing the issue for another 10 or 20 years."
Van Krieken said it was also crucial that tariff reductions should not go beyond what had already been stipulated as sufficient to protect the interests of the Australian TCF industry.
"While we recognise that developing countries have specific needs, we are particularly concerned that tariff reductions should not be too dramatic for developing countries."
Many Asian countries were defined as developing countries, but could be disproportionately advantaged by dramatic tariff reductions.
The conference would also consider the possibility of a sectoral agreement for the TCF industry.
This would function across all WTO countries according to parameters relating specifically the TCF sector, he said.
"We have been investigating the feasibility of a sectoral agreement but the feedback has not been overly positive, largely because of the complexity of drafting an agreement that would work across all countries.
"Regardless of whether we have a sectoral agreement or not, we would want to be sure that tariffs were kept at an acceptable level," he said.