Search the Internet          Tips  Sites: Finance, Investment

India scripts global strategy for WTO meet

India is trying to formulate a global strategy, involving developing countries, to fight the discriminatory World Trade Organisation regime, according to an expert on trade laws and WTO.

A concerted effort is underway to pool various issues that are increasingly becoming important both at political and economic levels for the developing countries so that their representatives could jointly fight discriminatory WTO regime at the ministerial conference at Doha in November this year, Sunil Bhargava, chairman of the Committee on Trade Laws and WTO, told reporters in Jaipur on Wednesday.

In a run-up to the Doha conference, the ICAI is holding an international conference on 'Concerns of the developing nations in the WTO regime' in Delhi on August 21 and 22 to be attended by both subject experts and practising professionals from a large number of countries including Italy, Belgium, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and European Union. Experts from UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade & Development) and WTO will also be attending it, Bhargava said.

To be inaugurated by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the conference will deliberate upon a wide range of issues from anti-dumping and anti-subsidy, through TRIPS (Trade-Related Intellectual Properties Rights), TRIMS (Trade-Related Investment Measures) to Competition Law, he said.

Bhargava said India and other developing countries were facing a world order that is changing much too fast for them to comprehend their implications in the long run.

By formulating various provisions in their favour the rich nations, particularly United States, had started cornering all benefits at the cost of developing nations.

The share of developed countries in the global market rose from 51 per cent in 1995 to 57.4 per cent last year during the WTO regime. During this period, US alone gained $4 trillion worth of market shares thanks to the WTO regime.

Opinion in India, he said, was divided over whether the country should seek a total review of the WTO provisions or concentrate on implementation aspect.

He said seven study groups had been set up to come up with Indian responses to various issues. The groups included planners, bureaucrats and experts.

Bhargava said India would fight both at the political and economic front the discriminatory WTO regime.

Most concerning issues are related to the agriculture sector where India is under pressure to abolish subsidies.

United States, he said, was spending $325 billion subsidy on agriculture against India's total agriculture output of $89 billion.

India would insist that maximum subsidy allowable for a country should be on a per capita basis for which fundamental changes were required in the WTO agreement.

India should impress upon WTO members during negotiations that direct input subsidy to farm sector should not be curtailed where average yield was below the world average.

Similarly, all poverty alleviation programmes in developing countries should be out of the purview of subsidy restrictions.

Tell us what you think of this report