With less than three weeks until the end-of-June deadline set by WTO director general Pascal Lamy for sketching the outline of an agreement, the African Group has tabled a proposal that would let its members band together to support the prices of commodity exports that are critical to their economies.

‘There is increasingly a view among commodity experts and policymakers in commodity-dependent exporting countries that for commodities like coffee and cocoa, where the distortion of prices is the result of oversupply of a structural nature in the international markets, appropriate action may have to be taken by the producing countries themselves, by entering into arrangements for management of supplies, through control of overproduction and/or imposition of restrictions on exports,’ they say in a paper submitted to the WTO.

The price of some commodities, especially metals such as copper and nickel, has risen sharply in recent years as China gobbles up resources at an unprecedented rate, but the value of many raw materials has been in long-term decline.

Some of the world’s poorest countries are heavily dependent on exports of a single commodity. Coffee accounts for 60 per cent of Ethiopia’s export earnings and 80 per cent of Uganda’s, for example – and campaigners argue that coffee processors, many of them giant multinational firms, are able to exploit their market power to keep prices low. For example, a pound of coffee cost about $1.50 in 1980 but is worth just 90 cents today.

‘Despite recent increases, coffee prices are little more than half what they were in 1980. Unless agricultural farm prices increase significantly and the volatility is taken out of commodity markets, millions of small-scale producers will be driven from their land and into poverty,’ said Tim Rice, trade policy officer at Action Aid.

African producers are also fighting for the elimination of so-called ‘tariff escalation’, under which rich countries slap higher taxes on processed products, such as roasted coffee, preventing producing countries from exporting anything but the raw material.

Tim Lines, a consultant specialising in trade issues, described the volatility of commodities as ‘an issue that has been swept under the carpet for 20 years’.

WTO rules don’t expressly forbid action to support commodity prices, but many African countries are nervous about intervening in markets. ‘For producer countries there is an ambiguity, because there is so much pressure for doing everything according to the market,’ Lines said.

The Africa Group’s move comes as negotiations in the Doha round of global trade talks, launched more than four years ago, reach a critical final stage. Trade ministers are due to gather in Geneva on 29 June to try to sign up to a draft agreement. But with both the US and the EU entrenched in long-standing negotiating positions, many analysts are pessimistic about the chances of a deal.

‘It’s the usual stand-off,’ said Matt Griffith of Cafod. ‘The US is really starting to cause concern. Posturing is normal in these talks, but there’s a feeling that they aren’t even thinking about where they want to move to.’