'Unfinished trade agenda hurting Doha Round'

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Geneva, Jul 22: As the mini-ministerial meeting at the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Round talks entered the crunch phase where member countries will put forth the numbers on their reduction commitments in agriculture, manufacturing and services, India, on Tuesday, highlighted the huge unfinished agenda of trade reform that is staring at the 30-odd ministers gathered here to try and clinch a global trade deal.

“Nothing has been settled. A lot of figures are still remaining to be resolved. Since this is the first round where numbers would be discussed by the ministers, you will find countries making offers and counter offers. They will sleep over it and come back again tomorrow and respond to counteroffers” Indian commerce secretary G K Pillai told reporters here.

“If there is a consensus on agriculture and industrial goods, then all the ministers will agree that on services, the countries should now put in the final offers by September 15,” he added.

Though India has already indicated its positive response on many requests on market access in several services sectors received by it from its trading partners, it was disappointed on not getting strong signals in reciprocation.

“We are hoping to get these signals in the Signalling Conference. If we do not get these signals, we will find it tough to sustain our enthusiasm during the talks on agriculture and Nama (Non Agricultural Market Access or industrial goods) modalities,” Pillai said.

India expects a positive outcome from the July 24 Signalling Conference on Services negotiations, but in that conference if any country gives something, it can always take it back if the offer by the other countries is not good enough. India has been aggressively pushing for substantial market access for its services in the developed world, especially regarding free movement of service suppliers across borders and outsourcing

Reiterating that it will engage constructively to deliver the development dimension of the Doha Round, India, however, said that the WTO negotiation texts on agriculture and industrial goods continues to contain “intrinsic imbalances in certain areas”.

India said these flaws should soon be addressed as the already fragile livelihood of millions of poor people in developing countries was at stake.

It was important that all the issues concerning developing countries are addressed positively and with sympathy and not in mercantilist considerations, India said in a statement.

On the agriculture negotiations, India said the core concerns of the developing countries on livelihood and food security and rural development issues should be completely taken on board through the twin measures of special products (SP) and special safeguard mechanism (SSM).

“It is absolutely essential for us to protect the livelihood concerns of subsistence farmers and therefore SP and SSM are indispensable,” Pillai said.India had initially pitched for around 20% of the total agricultural tariff lines need to be demarcated as SPs (or farm products that are subjected to minimum or no duty cuts) in order to adequately protect the livelihood of the country’s subsi-stence farmers.

The WTO revised text on agriculture says “There shall be 10-18% of tariff lines available for self-designation as SPs. Up to 6% of the lines may have no cut. The overall average cut shall, in any case, be 10-14%.” Besides, SSM available to protect the poor farm sector in developing countries continues to be weaker than a similar mechanism available to rich countries.

Turning to Nama, Pillai said the concerns of less than full reciprocity (LFTR) in reduction commitments needs to be met as also the fact that India needs adequate policy space to protect its vulnerable and infant industries

The developing countries have pointed out that the new industrial goods text is not consistent with the LTFR principle. Though, as per LFTR principle the developed countries have to make proportionately higher industrial duty reduction commitments than the developing nations, the proposal on coefficients in the revised Nama text would instead result in higher percentage cuts on industrial tariffs by developing countries as compared to the cuts by developed countries.

India also reiterated that it would be unwilling to negotiate on market opening clauses like anti-concentration and sectorals. As per the ‘Anti-Concentration’ clause, sensitive tariff lines that would not be subject to tariff reduction cannot be concentrated in one particular sector. In sectoral talks, certain sectors would be culled out from the entire list of goods, and then tariffs on these items would be brought down to zero within a specified period that would be decided during the talks.

Sectors like automobiles, auto components, textiles, marine products and chemicals in India are likely to be severely hurt if these clauses are included in the final agreement, as it will result in cheaper imports from developed nations. “Once you (the developing countries) have been given the flexibility (to protect the infant and vulnerable industries) why do you want to restrict it further by using anti-concentration clauses. There is no anti-concentration applied in sensitive products in agriculture, so why should it be applied in Nama” Pillai sai.