Nepal and India moved a step closer toward coming to an agreement on renewing the trade treaty before if expires on 5 December. At the centre of the dispute are five Nepali exports whose surge India says has hurt its domestic producers. There's another unarticulated issue that India wants addressed-a safeguard to ensure that it will not be hurt when Nepal joins the World Trade Organisation (WTO). WTO rules say a member country must extend to all members the same treatment, and though there are safeguards for concessions given to least developed countries, India would like to ensure that the treaty does not require it to grant facilities similar to the provisions of the treaty to other LDCs. Still, things appear to be progressing. Finally, in the last round (3-4 November) officials took the advice of lobbies in both countries and began talking about value addition as a way to deal with the problem of surge, an indication that a resolution is imminent. Indian officials are said to have suggested different models for calculating value addition and Nepal has its own ideas on how that should be done. Finalising a formula acceptable to both sides, fixing value added percentages and ironing out the implications of this on industry and trade may take some more meetings.