This Article is From Jul 23, 2014

India to Take Firm Stand at the World Trade Organisation

India to Take Firm Stand at the World Trade Organisation

Representational Image (Photo courtesy: Thinkstock)

New Delhi: India is all set to tell developed nations at a meeting in Geneva on Thursday that it will not yield to pressure and sign the World Trade Organisation's Bali agreement if its demands on food security subsidies is not addressed. New Delhi says its $12 billion (Rs 72,140 crore) anti-poverty food programme must be safeguarded.

Here are the Top 10 Facts in this Story:

  1. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman gave final touches to India's stand on the Trade Facilitation Agreement or TFA on Tuesday. While in the opposition, the BJP had opposed the Bali deal, saying it was skewed in favour of developed nations.

  2. The TFA is the first ever global trade agreement under the WTO. India is the most prominent of a group of developing nations angry with rich countries for failing to address their concerns about the deal, struck by the 160 members of the WTO in Bali, Indonesia, last year.

  3. India stockpiles food for its poor, citing the need for food security, but doing so puts it at risk of breaking rules of the WTO, which worries that the stockpiling of subsidised food can distort trade. In Bali, WTO members agreed to give India a pass on its stockpiles until 2017, while negotiating a permanent solution.

  4. WTO rules would limit India's food subsidy drastically.  India wants those rules changed and worries that the WTO agreement as it stands does too little to guarantee that.

  5. "India's stand is that it will not move forward on Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) if a concrete roadmap to find a permanent solution on public food stockpile which is necessary for the food security programme is not agreed upon," a top government source said.

  6. In principle, the WTO could pass the TFA agreement even in the face of India's opposition, on the basis of a qualified majority. But experts say that would be unprecedented and virtually impossible in an organisation that operates on consensus. India is considered an influential member.

  7. Proponents of the Bali deal believe it could add $1 trillion (around Rs. 60 lakh crore) to global gross domestic product and 21 million jobs by slashing red tape and streamlining customs, eliminating delays at the border that can often cost more than tariffs themselves.

  8. The United States and the European Union are pushing for the TFA as it will help them in pushing more of their produce into the markets of developing and poorer countries.

  9. New Delhi and other emerging market governments are worried that once the TFA deal is signed, developed countries will forget about the concerns of the developing world. Officials point out that since the deal was struck in Bali, WTO discussions have focused almost entirely on trade facilitation with no talks on the subsidy issue.

  10. A failure at tomorrow's meeting and the derailing of the TFA could prove disastrous for the moribund World Trade Organization or WTO and the system of global free trade deals it underpins. The trade initiative has to be ratified by July 31 and must be formally implemented by mid-2015.



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