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Trade and Industry Department The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
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The Fifth WTO Ministerial Conference 

The Fifth WTO Ministerial Conference (MC5) was held in Cancun, Mexico, from 10 to 14 September 2003. At MC5, Ministers were expected to take stock of progress of the negotiations under the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) mandated at the Fourth WTO Ministerial Conference, give further instructions to take forward negotiations on key issues like agriculture and non-agricultural market access (NAMA), and to take decision on the launch of negotiation on the "Singapore Issues", namely trade and investment, trade and competition policy, transparency in government procurement and trade facilitation.

However, after five days of tough negotiations, Ministers were unable to reach consensus on the direction of the negotiations under the DDA. Members' polarised positions on the Singapore Issues triggered the collapse of the MC, despite progress was made in agriculture and NAMA. On 14 September 2003, the Chair of MC5 (Mexico) announced that the MC could not lead to any agreement. Ministers only instructed officials to continue to work on the outstanding issues, and asked the Chairman of the General Council and the Director-General of the WTO to convene a General Council meeting at Senior Officials level before 15 December 2003 to discuss the way forward for the negotiations.