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M. Ramesh

Dusseldorf , June 7

THE Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, on Tuesday urged the developed countries to keep up their WTO commitments of giving market access to agricultural products from developing countries and eliminating farm subsidies.

"It is now widely accepted that the earlier round (of WTO negotiations) did not bring enough benefits to the developing countries as was promised," Mr Chidambaram said, speaking at a reception hosted on the eve of the annual general meeting of the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce here on Monday.

Developing countries can only export merchandise; not many of them can export services like India does, Mr Chidambaram said, adding that if developed countries did not buy their goods, the developing countries would feel they have no stake in the WTO.

India, on its part, "is ready to make an offer for the services sector" in return for market access for agricultural goods, he said.

He said the "left over issues" from the previous rounds of negotiations needed to be addressed first, before bringing in new issues into the talks.

Answering a question, Mr Chidambaram conceded that India's peak Customs duties, at 15 per cent, were still high, but the Government's intention was to bring them down to "Asean levels''.

Speaking along the same lines at the annual general meeting on Tuesday, Mr Subodh Sapra, President (Polyester sector), Reliance Industries Ltd, urged the European Union countries to stop imposing anti-dumping or other barriers on Indian goods.

Mr Sapra is also Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Trevira GmbH, a polyester company that Reliance acquired last year.

"Last year, my company purchased equipment worth 200 million euros from Germany,'' Mr Sapra said, and asked Germany to "convince Brussels that it was not fair to put anti-dumping duties when our products come into Europe in a small way''.

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