WTO advisory council meet today
S Venkitachalam
New Delhi, Jan 7: The advisory council on international
trade on WTO matters will meet here on Tuesday against the
backdrop of the Doha declaration and the tasks ahead for New
Delhi and other developing countries at the new negotiations
in Geneva under the WTO aegis.
Commerce and industry minister Murasoli Maran will chair the
meeting, which will also be attended by commerce secretary Prabir
Sengupta and special secretary in charge of WTO matters Nripendra
Misra, besides other senior officials and members of the council.
This will be the ninth meeting of the council and it comes after
the Doha ministerial last November. The previous one was held
here on October 8 last year.
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Mr Maran had already briefed the outcome of the Doha conference,
especially the major gains for New Delhi, at a meeting of
the members of the Parliamentary consultative committee of
his ministry recently and he will now utilise Tuesday’s meeting
to throw light on the strategy to be adopted at the next WTO
rounds.
Soon after his arrival from Doha, the minister had said the
government had “marginally” yielded on the environment issue
as a “trade off” for securing concessions in agriculture,
in addition to obtaining commitments for immediate redressal
of 50 implementation concerns at Doha. Moreover, New Delhi
had been able to make the WTO accept its viewpoint that the
current study programme must continue on the four contentious
Singapore issues and that the negotiations could start only
after receiving the reports at the fifth ministerial, he had
stated.
These issues relate to trade and investment, trade and competition,
transparency in government procurement practices, and trade
facilitation. Further, a decision on these issues would be
taken by “explicit consensus” before the fifth round slated
for 2003, he said and clarified that the words “explicit consensus”
meant the veto permitted to all the WTO-members.
He, however, expressed disappiontment when he said “we did
not derive any comfort in the area of textiles, adding the
implementation of the growth-on-growth provisions in the WTO
agreement on textiles and clothing had been entrusted with
a committee for further studies. The committee is expected
to submit its findings in June.
Subsequently, Mr Misra set at rest doubts about the four Singapore
issues and said there was no confusion at all as there would
be “no negotiations (on the subject)” unless there was an
explicit consensus on all the four issues at the next round.
The earlier summit talked about “explicit consensus” only
two such issues - investment and competition - and that it
now extended to all the four Singapore issues, he claimed.
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