Govt to release white paper to make WTO talks transparent

In a move to set a precedent and ensure transparency, the Centre is planning to come out with a ?white paper? on the ?Doha Development Round? negotiations of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), explaining to the common man in simple terms all the details regarding the talks.

During the recent visit of WTO director general Pascal Lamy here, India had indicated its willingness to return to the negotiating table and restart the seven-year-old Doha Round talks. The talks, aimed at clinching a global trade deal, had failed late last month mainly due to differences between India and the US over safeguards to protect poor farmers in developing countries from import surges of agricultural products.

India would give another shot at taking forward the talks next month if the US gives positive signals and then the Centre would come out with the ?white paper? by October-end , a senior government official told FE. The ?white paper?, devoid of all the jargon, would contain the nitty-gritty of the multilateral trade negotiations, India?s stance on all the issues on the table alongwith the positions of other countries as well as the reasons for the failure or success, the official added.

Trade experts here welcomed the move. Biswajit Dhar, professor and head, centre for WTO studies, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade said, ?This is an extremely welcome move. It would deter the detractors from accusing that the government keeps negotiating process under wraps.?

Nagesh Kumar, director general, Research and Information System for Developing Countries, said, ?If the government comes out with a ?white paper? on the status of the Doha Round talks, it will be useful for the general public and stakeholders in the country to make an assessment of the expected impact of the Round. It will also set a healthy precedent for the government to bring transparency in policy making process which has implication for different sectors of the economy.?

After requesting India to return to talks in Geneva, Lamy had gone to the US to get them to do the same. Some US officials, however, had hinted that it was meaningless to bring back the WTO member countries to the negotiating table as the unresolved issues were too complicated to be settled so soon.

During the nine-day long marathon talks at the WTO headquarters in Geneva last month, India, with the backing of China and around 100 countries, refused to give in to attempts to weaken a measure called the special safeguard mechanism (SSM), meant to protect poor farmers, despite enormous pressure from developed countries, especially the US.

The SSM enables developing countries like India to impose additional duties temporarily to protect the livelihood of its hundreds of millions of poor farmers from import surges and price declines of sensitive agricultural products. But it is a contingency measure and therefore used only when imports are substantive.

Responding to the WTO?s proposal that the SSM can be operational only if there was a 40% increase in imports, India had told the WTO that if developing countries were forced to wait till a 40% rise in imports, it would wreak havoc on the livelihood of poor farmers due to cheap farm imports from the rich world. India wanted the trigger cut-off of SSM to be at around 10% or less.

India also insisted that the additional safeguard duties that it could impose on such imports should be beyond the Uruguay Round-bound levels (tariffs that were committed to at the Uruguay Round talks) and pointed out that the proposal of just 15% additional duty would be insufficient to curb such import surges and price declines. The US, alongwith some countries with interests in farm export business, said the SSM would disrupt normal trade rather than protect poor farmers.

India also pointed out that the SSM proposal available to developing countries continued to be a diluted version of a similar mechanism that was available to rich countries to protect the interests of their rich farmers from such cheap imports.

The other main unresolved issues include reduction of huge trade-distorting farm subsidies of the US, especially their cotton subsidies and Washington?s insistence on the inclusion of provision known as ?sectorals? in the final deal on industrial goods. India had opposed the inclusion of sectorals saying they are aimed at forcing developing countries to eliminate duties in certain infant and vulnerable industries. India had said that negotiations on sectorals should only be voluntary and not mandatory.