Revised WTO text on farm, industry likely

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New Delhi, Jun 17 : The World Trade Organisation is likely to come out with a new revised negotiation text each on agriculture and industrial goods by this month-end to ensure a successful conclusion to the Doha Round talks that have been dragging on for seven years.

“Discussions are going on and the talks by senior officials will continue. The differences are being narrowed. Some convergence needs to be achieved before the ministerial talks expected by mid-July,” commerce secretary GK Pillai said on the sidelines of a function. Pillai added that while the ministerial, the highest decision making body of the WTO, would only be discussing industrial goods and agriculture, other issues like TRIPS, Rules, Aid for Trade, trade facilitation could be negotiated post-Ministerial but before December 2008, the deadline for completion of the Doha Round.

In a bid to prevent the talks from collapsing India, US and the European Union have held talks recently to iron out their differences. Speaking at a conference on globalisation, organised by FICCI and University of Oxford in Oxford on Monday, commerce and industry minister Kamal Nath reiterated India’s demand to the US to reduce their “trade distorting” agriculture subsidies by just one to pave way for striking an deal to complete the Doha Round. A PTI report quoting Nath said “My offer to the US is that they should reduce their subsidy by just one dollar and we have a deal.”

Claiming that the US has not been forthcoming in this regard, Nath said “they (US) say -- forget about reducing the subsidy even by a single dollar, we want to have a right to double it in the next 10 Years”

He asked the British leadership, both in the government and academia, to influence the US administration to be reasonable and agree for removal of “structural flaws” that have marked the WTO for the last 13 years.

On director-general Pascal Lamy’s keenness to hold a ministerial meeting in July, Nath said “That depends on the progress. Well, we have progress. We are better today than a month ago but there are many more milestones (to cross).”