The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has called a ministerial meeting in November, the first in four years. However, the global body has downplayed the event as a regular meeting on ?the multilateral trading system and the current global economic environment?.
Though ministerial talks are to be held once in two years, WTO on Wednesday specified that the forthcoming meeting would not be a session on Doha Development Round negotiations. The previous ministerial meeting was in December 2005 in Hong Kong. The nearly eight-year-old Doha Round talks is stuck due to persisting differences between the developed and developing WTO member countries on the liberalisation of trade in agriculture and industrial goods.
While the developing countries want the rich nations to drastically reduce their multi-billion dollar ?trade distorting? subsidies, the developed countries in turn want developing nations to cut their tariffs on a host of products. Developing countries, including India,?also wanted to impose special safeguard duties to protect their poor farmers from a surge in farm imports, which the rich nations did not agree to.
India had said earlier this month that the WTO is gearing up to hold a full-fledged ministerial meeting by January-February 2010 to take forward the seven-year-old Doha Round of negotiations. Commerce secretary G K Pillai had said while technical discussions would continue at the WTO, the US is expected to complete its internal review by September 2009. One of the main factors influencing a breakthrough in the Doha Round talks would be when the US would recover from the economic crisis.
Meanwhile, during June-October 2009, there would be informal ministerial consultations during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting, Cairns Group (a coalition of 19 agricultural exporting countries) meeting in Bali (Indonesia) from June 7-9, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) meeting towards the end of June in Paris and finally at the G8 summit of major economic powers in July. The WTO would then hold a mini-ministerial meeting November 2009 at Geneva to do stocktaking and follow it up with a ministerial meeting in January-February 2010, Pillai said.
Besides, India has rejected a new ‘US-backed attempt? to bypass the current method of talks and get countries to directly bring to the table specific commitments on tariff and subsidy cuts. India said this new attempt was a tactic deployed by the developed nations to get more market access in developing countries without giving anything in return. New Delhi also said such attempts by developed countries will be met with so much opposition from poor and developing nations that it will delay the talks by another 5 years.
Pillai said ?they (the US and other developed countries) want to raise new issues and delay the talks by another 5 years. India would counter such attempts by asking for disciplining of green box subsidies,? he said. Though green box subsidies are generally considered ?non-trade distorting?, there have been allegations that developed countries are shifting their farm domestic support to green box.??
Adding issues like labour, environment will only cause further delay, he said. The US was going for a new approach as the new administration feels that they have given too much in the negotiations and received too little, Pillai said.
India had also said the ongoing global financial crisis might force many countries to withdraw the offers they made at the services negotiations on liberalisation of the financial services sector.