Nath, Lamy call for restarting WTO talks

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New Delhi, Aug 12 : commitments, the political reality has gained the upper hand and most significant among the outstanding issues was the issue of special safeguards mechanism (SSM) for agriculture.

The SSM enables developing countries like India to hike agricultural tariffs to protect the livelihood of its hundreds of millions of poor farmers from import surges and price declines of sensitive farm products.

Lamy said if the Doha Round is concluded successfully, it can result in worldwide import tariffs being reduced by 50%, which in turn would result in savings of $150 billion a year in tariffs. Two-third of these tariff cuts would be expected from the rich nations. This means developing countries would benefit to that extent and gain more market access.

On SSM, Lamy said, there were two diverging views which proved impossible to reconcile in the talks last month—one, developing countries need a safety net against a surge in imports to protect their farming system; and two, like all safeguards under the WTO rules, SSM should be subject to certain conditions and limitations in order to ensure that it does not hamper normal trade flows and that it should not be misused. “That was the main political difference,” he said.

Nath said India could not have accepted a remedy against import surges with several strings attached. He said developed countries had already been using a similar mechanism for the last 14 years, Nath said.