With no solution in sight on the Doha round deadlock, deputy director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Harshvardhan Singh is slated to visit New Delhi early next month. Though government officials ruled out any significant headway being made in the WTO negotiations, trade experts, however, said it could be a good starting point.
Singh is expected to address some industry leaders during his stay and he is also slated to speak at a conference organised by the commerce ministry on government procurement?a very contentious issue both in WTO and in bilateral trade treaties that India is currently negotiating.
?India has been supporting every initiative to restart a dialogue process with the rest of the world to conclude the Doha rounds. India has been active in this regard,? a government source said.
Earlier this year, WTO set an ambitious deadline of concluding the Doha round of talks by 2010-end?something that seemes highly unlikely in the present scenario. ?For the deadline to be met we are hoping that there is some breakthrough in the next few months,? said TS Vishwanath, trade advisor at Delhi-based law firm APG-SLG. He added that any future progress was not in India?s hands because it was the lack of intent being shown by the US and EU that was slowing down the process.
A senior trade expert at a Delhi-based think tank who did not wish to be named said WTO has to show some progress by the end of the year or else it would get very difficult for countries and negotiators to take it seriously.
Executive director at Centre for Trade and Development (Centad) Linu Mathew Philip said in the context of a multilateral trade forum, deadlines cannot be seen as sacrosanct. ?If 2010-deadline is not met, another date has to be given and the job must go on,? he said. Philip said as of now with the whole swathe of issues on the table, the deadline is unlikely to be met. ?Some sacrifices have to be made by the developed world. But the question is whether they are willing to? especially in the context of the crisis we are seeing,? he added.