BackIndia to push for food security, farm imports plan at WTO Geneva summit
New Delhi to insist on first finalizing a work plan for special safeguard mechanism on farm imports and a solution for food security when WTO gets back to work in February
PremiumPhoto: AFP
New Delhi: India will insist on first finalizing the work programme for a special safeguard mechanism (SSM) and a permanent solution for food security when the World Trade Organization (WTO) gets back to work early next month in Geneva before any attempt is made to discuss new issues to be included at the multilateral trade talks.
India’s strategy was finalized last week at a two-day brainstorming meeting of its trade delegation from Geneva and officials in the commerce ministry in New Delhi.
“Our approach will be straightforward. All the issues that have been agreed to at the Nairobi ministerial need to get priority," a commerce ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
While India came away disappointed from the Nairobi meeting as the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) was buried without conclusion after 15 years of negotiations, it had a face-saver in terms of assurance that the negotiations for these two aspects of agriculture will be fast-tracked.
At Nairobi, while India insisted that DDA must continue after the Nairobi conference and no new issues must be introduced into the WTO agenda until the DDA has been completed, developed countries led by the US and the European Union were strongly opposed to the continuation of the DDA.
The Nairobi ministerial declaration acknowledges that members “have different views" on how to address the future of the Doha Round negotiations but noted the “strong commitment of all members to advance negotiations on the remaining Doha issues".
The Nairobi meeting decided that special sessions of the committee on agriculture will be held in an accelerated time frame for finding a permanent solution to the issue of public stockholding for food security purposes and to pursue negotiations on SSM for developing countries.
The WTO General Council has been mandated to regularly review the progress of these negotiations. However, the declaration did not specify any time frame for concluding these negotiations. Earlier, India had derived an interim agreement that protects its right to public stockholding for food security purposes indefinitely, but the country has been insisting on a permanent solution as the present arrangement does not allow it to expand its food security programme to new areas.
An agreement on SSM will allow developing countries to raise tariffs temporarily to protect their farmers from high import surges in agricultural commodities from developed countries.
Biswajit Dhar, professor of economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, said although this is the right approach to follow, there should be consistency in what we signal to the rest of the world.
“Our agriculture tariff liberalization policy should be uniform, both at the bilateral and multilateral levels. Otherwise, we will be sending conflicting signals. We also have to get our G-33 position on special products and SSM back on track for the success of our strategy in Geneva," he added.
The officials from the permanent mission to WTO made presentations on the current thinking on agriculture and what are the likely scenarios that could evolve post-Nairobi.
The official quoted earlier said that the need for a greater coordination between the Geneva mission and the commerce ministry was emphasized.
“We should not wait for the last minute to handle a situation. Our position should be evolving and there should be clear understanding of how we should move ahead. Now, there will be more regular interactions. When any important issue comes, there should be quicker communication through video conferencing. The Geneva mission also pointed out that, technically, they were very sound and headquarters (commerce ministry) should have taken advantage of it," he added.
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