Cancun Conference could not reach any conclusion and produce a Ministerial Declaration. There were several reasons for it.
(i) While no agreement had been reached on issues like agriculture, market access and services, the EU kept insisting for inclusion of Singapore Issues in the agenda of negotiations.
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(ii) The developing countries realised that right from the Uruguay Round they had committed themselves to much more than they could really bear. The contents of the concluded agreements were such that the poorer countries could not expect a proportionate share of the gains of globalisation and generate growth multipliers.
They were increasingly convinced that somehow WTO, instead of becoming a mechanism of development, was becoming a mechanism of institutionalised inequality between the rich and poor countries.
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(iii) The agenda of negotiations agreed at Uruguay was already very heavy. However, the developed countries were insisting on adding more subjects to the agenda for negotiations and consequently more commitments by the developing countries.
Some of the commitments already made and proposed were such that the developing countries would lose their export competitiveness in international markets and their economic dependence upon developed countries would increase.
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(iv) On their part, the developed countries were not showing any seriousness in implementing their own commitments.
(v) Though WTO decisions are supposed to be made on “one member price vote” basis, the developing countries found that, in effect, they had much less say in actual decision-making.
(vi) While developing countries insisted that the items to be discussed were the implementation of commitments already made, the developed countries wanted to avoid this discussion.
Instead, they wanted to move on to negotiations on new subjects and commitments including those relating to the Singapore Issues. This would have made the WTO agenda still heavier and burdensome for the developing countries.
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(vii) Thus, the developing countries had been nursing a feeling that injustice was being meted out to them in the name of globalisation and rule-based world economic order.
They also felt that their independence of taking several decisions relating to growth of their domestic economies and welfare of their masses was being encroached upon. They were apprehensive that the Cancun Conference would be used for further erosion of their sovereignty.
(vii) The developed countries refused to accommodate the developing and least developed countries on issues of food security and rural employment etc. The US-EU pact on agriculture was highly vague and non-committal.
When the cotton growing countries of Western and Central Africa (Chad, Benin, Bukania Faso and Mali) asked US to scrap subsidies to its cotton growing farmers (about 25000 of them getting $4 billion in subsidies) which were causing a loss of about $6 billion to the farmers of these poor countries, USA refused to so.
(viii) The developing and least developed countries joined hands and offered a joint front at the Conference.
In the net, the Conference members found themselves taking three different stands as follows:
(a) One set of rich countries insisted that if Doha agenda was to be implemented then that should be accompanied by negotiations on Singapore Issues also.
(b) Another set of rich countries insisted that any negotiation on reduction of agricultural subsidies was to be accompanied by negotiations on Singapore Issues.
(c) The poor countries insisted that there should be negotiations on both (i) reduction of agricultural subsidies, and (ii) implementation of Doha Agenda, but (iii) Singapore Issues should be left out.