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New Delhi , Aug 22

THE Union Commerce and Industry Minister, Mr Arun Jaitley, has said that the two key issues likely to dominate the proceedings of the forthcoming Fifth Ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Cancun, Mexico would be agriculture and investment.

Giving a synoptic picture of the State of the play in the WTO in the context of the ongoing negotiations for modalities to the members of Parliament Consultative Committee, attached to his Ministry here, Mr Jaitley explained India's interests and concerns in these two areas as well as the other areas in the WTO.

He said the three pillars of agricultural negotiations in the WTO were domestic support or subsidies, export support in terms of credit and market access, which referred mainly to the reduction in tariffs.

Mr Jaitely said that given the large number of resource poor farmers in the country and its very large percentage of agriculture-dependent population, India's stand was that subsidies given by the developed countries must be gradually reduced and eventually eliminated so as to ensure a level playing field for the developing world both in domestic as also in export markets.

Besides, there must be some cushioning by way of tariff protection for special products and there must also be special safeguard mechanisms to protect against price fluctuations and surge in imports.

While the Harbinson (Chairman of the Trade Negotiating Committee on Goods) draft of Febraury, on agriculture spoke of reduction in subsidies by developed countries and provided for special products and special safeguard mechanism for the developing countries, the recent EU-US proposals envisaged marginal reduction in subsidies, steeper reduction in tariffs, no provision for special products and some provision for special safeguard mechanism, Mr Jaitley noted.

As this appeared to be loaded against developing countries, a coalition of countries including India, China, Brazil and 10 of the18 Cairns Group (predominantly farm products producing countries) representing half of the world's population of farmers, have submitted to the WTO their counter proposals taking on board their concerns on agriculture.

Referring to non-agricultural market access negotiations, Mr Jaitley said this pertained to proposals by developed countries for moving towards zero tariffs by 2015 and informed that consultations were held with industry in respect of the seven sectors of interest and sensitivity for India such as textiles, leather, gems and jewellery, fish products, auto components and electronics.

Third area was that of TRIPs (trade-related intellectual property rights) and public health concerns of poorer countries would have to be resolved. Finally on Singapore issues, Mr. Jaitley said that India was one of the principal opponents of the proposal for bringing new issues specially; investment in the multilateral framework as it could involve compromising on sovereign policy space and there was no clarity on the scope and content.

Meanwhile, official sources said that the Cabinet Committee on WTO issues would meet on Saturday to finalise India's negotiating strategy for the Cancun Ministerial meeting to be held in Mexico from September 10 to 14.

He said the three pillars of agricultural negotiations in the WTO were domestic support or subsidies, export support in terms of credit and market access, which referred mainly to the reduction in tariffs.

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