Pressure is mounting on India in Bali to ease its stance on food subsidy and public stock holding norms to enable the stalled global trade talks to move forward.
As the ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) kicked off here, most countries including China and host Indonesia, have told India they would prefer to arrive at a consensus to show progress on the 12-year long Doha Round of trade talks.
While commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma held a series of bilateral meetings on Tuesday with these key nations to drum up support for India’s food security law his counterparts were not convinced. China?s minister for commerce Gao Hucheng told Sharma ?We respect your stand but we are working for a positive outcome here. Doha round is a development round. We have worked very hard and every party has made compromises?.
Indonesia?s minister of trade Gita Wirjawan, too, said India must understand. ?One needs to show flexibility and compromise. I think that may be required for the agriculture package.?
The Bali package includes proposals on TRQ administration, export competition, agriculture subsidies, streamlining trade facilitation and packages for least developing countries.
India wants the package to give it a four year time or peace clause during which it would not attract any penalty from its partners for breaching the 10% subsidy cap necessary to make the food security act operate.