'Unfinished trade agenda hurting Doha Round'

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Geneva, Jul 22: 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.