If Kamal Nath, India's Union minister for commerce and industry, is to be believed, the Hong Kong ministerial of the World Trade Organization (wto) was a big success for developing nations. His claims rest on the fact that the talks succeeded in getting developed countries to agree on a time-frame for the reduction of export subsidies in the farm sector. But a closer inspection shows the successes ranges between the exaggerated and the illusory (see box: Possible gains).

The final draft of the agreement, put out on December 18, 2005, suggests 2013 as the final date for phasing out agricultural export subsidies. Apart from Nath's pronouncements, there was self-congratulatory rhetoric from wto director-general Pascal Lamy. "We are tilting the balance in the wto firmly and steadily in favour of developing countries,' he gushed. The mood lifted further when Peter Mandelson, trade commissioner of the European Union (eu), which has the biggest farm subsidies, both domestic and external, said: "The draft is not a true success for us.'

But a lot of this is eyewash. Export subsidies are only 3.5 per cent of the eu's total farm subsidies