The Hindu Business Line : ‘Sense of urgency’ on WTO needed

New Delhi, Feb. 7 India today sought sagacity and statesmanship from countries benefited from globalisation, as otherwise the Doha Round of multilateral trade talks under the WTO auspices, which holds the promise of a conclusion by the end of this year, might move sharply away from convergence.

In a statement issued here, when revised texts on agriculture and non-agricultural market access (NAMA) are likely to be released in Geneva shortly, the Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Mr Kamal Nath, said that it was important to lend a sense of urgency to the proceedings for bringing about the convergence.

“It is content and not artificial timelines that are important. Thus the urgency had to be calibrated against the backdrop of realism and had to match the aspirations of the developing world in terms of an outcome that truly lived up to the promise of a development-oriented round. Towards this end, it is important to make comparable progress in not only agriculture, but NAMA, Services and Rules as well,” Mr Nath said.

Agri front

On agriculture, he said though considerable progress was made in the negotiations after the resumption of talks in February 2007, certain key issues like the cuts in overall trade-distorting domestic support, product specific limits in the amber and blue boxes, green box disciplines, sensitive products and tariff rate quotas, special safeguard, special products, special safeguard mechanism, tariff simplification, tariff capping and tariff escalation remain to be sorted out.

Mr Nath said that in order to live up to the avowed agenda of a Development Round, it must deliver on a significant and effective reduction in the agriculture subsidies being doled out by the developed countries. But firm commitments in this regard are yet to surface from these countries, he said, adding that the revised text of agriculture, which is scheduled to be brought out any day now, would reflect the actual progress made and the convergence achieved.

Mr Nath said that the NAMA draft modalities text was unbalanced and carried the views and ambition of only one set of advanced countries, while almost completely cold shouldering the views of more than a 100 developing countries.

He said that it was important that the views of the membership are reflected faithfully in any document that is brought out and the document helps in actually moving forward the negotiations rather than acting as a divisive and precipitating factor.

Service level

He said the third major pillar of the negotiations viz., services, has only made halting progress and said the ambition level in services has been clearly delineated in the Hong Kong Ministerial and any bid to reopen this issue would not help.

For India, services are a crucial sector and market access in Mode 1(cross border trade) and Mode 4 (movement of natural persons as service providers) with disciplines in domestic regulations are important and not negotiable.

Mr Nath acknowledged that there are other areas of the negotiations which hold significance in their own way, such as trade facilitation, and amendment to trade-related intellectual property rights. He referred to the draft modalities on rules which reflect the views of one country mainly in the anti-dumping sphere to the detriment of the vast majority of the membership.

On fisheries subsidies, he said that the absurd disciplines sought to be imposed on developing counties within their own territorial waters was unacceptable as it endangers the livelihood of millions of small fish folk.

Finally, Mr Nath said, when only the entire membership of the WTO is fully satisfied that there is sufficient convergence across at least agriculture, NAMA, services and rules, with perhaps just a few issues to be resolved, could there be a horizontal process involving the highest decision-making body of the WTO i.e., a ministerial meeting.

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