Agriculture)
-13.
Implementation of reform along the lines agreed by Ministers in 1987 and thereafter has made insufficient progress. Current policies in most countries remain too costly, are largely inefficient, and distort world markets. They are a significant cause of international frictions. Efforts by governments will be stepped up to promote agricultural reform, within a comprehensive policy framework addressing structural adjustment in the entire agro-food sector, as well as environmental and rural development questions. Ministers stress the unique role that the OECD must continue to play in support of this approach, both through analysis and improved monitoring, and through strengthened policy dialogue.
(Support measures}
14.
Industrial subsidies and, more generally, support measures distort markets, strain public finances, lock economies into sub-optimal patterns of activities, and provoke trade frictions. Ministers urge the OECD to press ahead with the work already under way to increase transparency and comparability in this domain, a first step towards eliminating or bringing under improved disciplines support measures that have trade-distorting effects and impede adjustment. They also stress the importance of concluding as quickly as possible the already long negotiations on an agreement with respect to shipbuilding. They call for a report at their 1994 meeting on the implementation of the recent agreements on further disciplines in the field of officially supported export credits and tied aid credits.
a