After participating in the convincing victory of UPA government in Indian Parliament, Kamal Nath, the Union Commerce and Industry Minister said that India would continue to protect its small and infant industry; no matter it resulted in the breaking of the deal. He returned to Geneva to rejoin the fifth round of World Trade Organisation (WTO) talk on Wednesday.
Before the beginning the fifth round of Doha Trade negotiations, India and other developing nations are stressing on major industrialised nations- United States and European Union- to make changes in this draft proposal on agricultural and Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA).
Pointing out the ‘rigid attitude’ of industrialised nations in the negotiations committee meeting as well as at a press conference, Indian Commerce Minister said that rich nations have not moved an inch since the Uruguay Round in reducing high tariffs or tariff peaks on exports of developing countries.
‘It is the responsibility of developed countries to make offers to reduce tariffs and subsidies to ensure the talks met the objective of reducing poverty in poor countries’ as said Kamal by adding that this was a round where developed countries have to put something on the table.
However, he appreciated the move of US to offer reduction in its disputed farm subsidies as part of its effort of saving the global trade deal but also asked it to cut more. “Washington had to cut subsidies more deeply but its move on Tuesday showed the deadlock was easing. So far, the US offer is wholly inadequate…. The first thing which we must take note of and must appreciate is that the US is moving.”
On the other hand, an US industry official told that first time US is ready to discuss on allowing more service professionals from India and other developing countries to work there in the seven year’s Doha trade negotiations.
But, on the agricultural sector, Nath is also willing to ensure the Indian farmers’ interest by getting some outcome, which would protect millions of poor vulnerable farmers of the country.
India is seeking the terms of appropriate special products and special safeguard mechanism (SSM) – an instrument to enable the developing countries to impose safeguard duties on imports of farm products when they surge and cross certain agreed thresholds to cause damage to domestic products – to protect the interest of Indian farmers who are economically weak compared to rich nation.
“The industrialised countries must not adopt ‘self-righteous’ position on SSM when they had used a similar flexibility called special safeguards,” said Nath by adding that it is extremely crucial to get some result on special safe guard and SSM in Indian interest and if India fails, it is ready to walk out.
In the industrial sectors, European Union wants zero import duty on Indian automobile, chemical and textile sectors while India are opposing this demand as these sectors mostly belong to small and marginal industries of India, as the Commerce Minister has pointed out that a large number of developing countries have industries with small scale sector. While these small units were getting competitive, the manufacturing industries of developed countries were getting more and more non competitive.
“To sustain the incompetitive industry of the developed countries, we cannot put to jeopardy the interests of developing countries,” he said.
The Indian industry associations: Federation of Indian Industry of Commerce (FICCI) and Chambers of Indian Industry (CII) - which representatives are also in Geneva with Kamal Nath- has continued the communication with their European and American counterparts to resolve this matter.
“We had talks with members of Business Europe today. They are keen that we commit to sectoral tariff elimination in the areas of automobile, textiles and chemicals. We said it was impossible for India as a majority of producers in these categories belong to the small and medium sector,” a FICCI representative said.
Besides this, Indian Industry associations are also opposing the anti-concentration clause, which prohibits developing nations to cluster the products together to protect themselves from tariff cuts. They are demanding the liberty to opt any item to protect them against cuts as long as it is within the range of 5% of total tariff lines.
This time for resolving the differences between the poor and the rich nations, the WTO Director is taking some serious efforts. He has broken the negotiators into nine small groups on agricultural and industrial issues and appointed the Norwegian trade minister to assist him.
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