The Indian government appears to be satisfied with the coverage of the new text on agriculture released on 19 May 2008 at Geneva but feels that better understanding was required on two crucial issues for developing countries – special safeguard measures (SSM) and special products (SP) and a few other issues.
According to Commerce Ministry officials, India's key concerns are in the area of Special Products (SP) – eligible for gentler tariff cuts because of food and livelihood concerns – and Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) – available to developing countries to protect their farmers from import surges (leading to price dips). On SSM, India's key demand is that volume and price trigger must be low and that these safeguards should be available to developing countries even after the Doha Round implementation period. But it seems that a lot more needs to be done on SSM & SP's to meet the livelihood concerns.
However, the government is of the view that the NAMA text does not reflect the aspirations of the developing countries. According to ministry sources the number of issues on which differences among negotiators persists have gone up to 97. It is reported that the NAMA Chair Mr. Don Stephenson has called for a meeting among senior officials next week to discuss on the diverging issues. However, while India will continue to remain committed to early conclusion of the deal, it would not accept a bad deal because of a time constraint.
According to Mr G. K. Pillai, Secretary to the Government of India in the Ministry of Commerce, who was speaking at the Roundtable on "WTO Negotiations: Options for India" jointly organised by the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) recently, the text on NAMA (Industrial goods) totally misses the development perspective and will need a complete overhaul. According to him the negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the coming weeks will be crucial for a successful completion of the Doha Development Round this year.
Explaining India's position on NAMA negotiations, another spokesperson from the Department of Commerce said negotiations on coefficients to be used in Swiss formula, flexibilities are the two most important components of the NAMA negotiations. He said that while the proposed coefficients in the new text don't in any way reflect the less than full reciprocity clause for developing countries, relating of flexibilities and coefficients is not acceptable. However, the industry is of the view that they would not like to see the development mandate of the Doha Round diluted.
Contributed By:
Prof. Bikramjit Sen
(Globsyn Business School)
Source: http://www.textiletreasure.com/print.php?news=2105
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