Passage 2
Let me touch on a few areas where progress in the Doha Development Agenda will help poorer countries reap further gains from trade and enhance their potential for sustainable development.
Agriculture is and has always been a fundamental sector for many developing countries. Agriculture is critical to the successful conclusion of the negotiations. Ambitious liberalization in this sector can offer big potential gains for all countries, particularly developing countries. WTO members are committed to comprehensive negotiations aimed at addressing market access, export subsidies and trade distorting domestic support. More than 50 developing countries depend on agriculture for over one-third of their merchandise export earnings. The eventual elimination of trade distorting measures which affect agricultural trade will be a tremendous boost for sustainable development. The World Bank has estimated that phasing out restrictions on agriculture could lead to higher income in developing countries of some US$400 billion by 2015. The gains from this are several times larger than all the debt relief granted to developing countries so far.
Tariff peaks and tariff escalation: after many rounds of trade negotiations, average tariffs on non-agricultural products have been significantly reduced. But relatively high tariffs still remain on some products in which developing countries are competitive and tariffs go up as the level of processing increases. Tariff escalation prevents developing countries from moving away from dependence on a few commodities. Tariff peaks and tariff escalation must be brought down by the negotiations, if developing countries are to be able to meaningfully gain from world merchandise trade.
50.Doing away with trade barriers in agriculture means exempting developing countries from debts.
A、True
B、False
【正确答案】：B
【名师解析】:选项A的陈述是"Doing away with trade barriers in agriculture means exempting developing countries from debts." 这与文章内容不符。文章中提到，消除农业领域的贸易扭曲措施将对发展中国家的可持续发展产生巨大推动作用，并且世界银行估计，逐步取消农业限制可能会使发展中国家到2015年的收入增加约4000亿美元。这笔收益远远超过迄今为止给予发展中国家的所有债务减免。因此，消除农业贸易壁垒并不意味着免除发展中国家的债务，而是通过提高他们的出口收入来促进经济增长。所以，正确答案是B，即该陈述是错误的。
