Minutes - TRIPS Council - View details of the intervention/statement

Ambassador Karen Tan (Singapore)
P ANNUAL REPORT
246. The Chairperson said that the draft Annual Report of the Council to the General Council had been circulated in document JOB(09)/148. It still needed to be updated so as to reflect the discussions at the present meeting. As she had mentioned under items D to F, paragraphs 7 and 8 of the draft report covered the Council's work pursuant to paragraph 44 of the Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration. She recalled that, in paragraph 44 of the Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration, Ministers had taken note of the work undertaken by the Council for TRIPS pursuant to paragraph 19 of the Doha Ministerial Declaration and had agreed that this work shall continue on the basis of paragraph 19 of the Doha Ministerial Declaration and the progress made in the Council for TRIPS to that date. Furthermore, they had instructed the General Council to report on its work in this regard to their next Session. 247. She said that, prior to the formal meeting, she had held informal consultations on how the Council should report on its work pursuant to Doha paragraph 19. In these consultations, it had been suggested that paragraphs 7 and 8 of the draft report should mention the fact that in the Council's discussions references had also been made to a document entitled "Draft Modalities for TRIPS Related Issues" circulated to the Trade Negotiations Committee in July 2008. In the light of these consultations, she suggested to complement the draft by adding a new sentence in paragraph 8 of the draft report before the sentence starting "No new submissions...". This sentence should read: In these discussions, some delegations referred to a communication from Albania, Brazil, China, Colombia, Croatia, Ecuador, the European Communities, Georgia, Iceland, India, Indonesia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Liechtenstein, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Pakistan, Peru, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, the ACP Group and the African Group to the Trade Negotiations Committee on "Draft Modalities for TRIPS Related Issues" circulated in July 2008 in document TN/C/W/52 and addenda 1 3. 248. She suggested that the Secretariat be requested to update the draft with this complement to reflect the discussions at the present meeting. She further suggested that the revised draft be faxed to Members who, given the proximity of the next General Council meeting scheduled for 17 November, would have three working days to comment on the updated parts of the draft report once it had been circulated by the Secretariat.
IP/C/M/61

2 2: The Annual Report (2009) of the Council for TRIPS was subsequently circulated as document IP/C/52.