By IANS
Gurgaon : India believes the Doha Round of trade talks has not failed and “we are inching forward to its completion”, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath said here Thursday.
He was speaking at the plenary session on “The Doha Round: A Multidimensional View” at the Partnership Summit 2008 organised jointly by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, the Haryana government and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
Stating that India was one of the founding members of the World Trade Organisation, the minister pointed out that WTO was a “contractual agreement among member nations” and not a “treaty”.
“The Uruguay Round (in the early 1990s) saw only 10 to 12 countries deciding the course of negotiations. That round dealt with easier issues and the developing countries did not have the technical expertise to support themselves in trade talks,” the minister noted.
“It was only late in 1995 (when WTO was formed), that the developing nations for the first time participated meaningfully in the global trade talks. Many countries were gasping with financial crises and free trade then became the mantra,” he added.
According to the minister, India initiated “economic reforms in a calibrated manner and unilaterally reduced tariffs, thereby calibrating the integration with the global economy and adopting globalisation.”
Thus, India never faced economic crises and was able to insulate itself from the East Asian meltdown and other global economic shocks, Kamal Nath contended.
In 2001, he said, the developed countries “demanded the Doha Round to correct the structural flaws in international trade. But by then, the global economic scenario had changed and globalisation became the mantra, and at the heart of globalisation, it was technology that brought about the transformation.”
“China became globally competitive, overtaking the developed nations and India grew to be most preferred outsourcing location for IT enabled services with its software prowess,” the minister said.
Yoshitaka Shindo, Japan’s senior vice minister of economy, trade and industry, said that free trade had played a major role in rebuilding his country’s economy in the post-World War II period.
“Though free trade agreements are important to boost trade between countries, they cannot be a substitute for a global multilateral trading system,” he said, speaking through an interpreter.
According to Shindo, “the challenge before the world is to make sure that all countries are able to share the fruits of successful conclusion of the Doha Round”.
Indonesian Trade Minister Mari Elka Pangestu gave a brief background of the Doha Round from the perspective of developing nations, saying: “Free trade is not an end in itself but should lead to development of countries worldwide.”
Thus, the “opening up of economies impacts various vulnerable sectors of the economy, so capacity, sequence and timing are major factors worth consideration.
“In agriculture, domestic support and export subsidies’ reduction is a priority need, as it affects the pattern of agriculture trade and works against the interests of the developing countries and LDCs (least developed countries).
Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean announced that his country and India had decided to set up a joint study group for a bilateral free trade agreement.
He also spoke about the “importance of domestic reforms in realising the benefits of trade liberalisation” and of the need for political will among nations for successfully concluding the Doha Round.