By Ranvir Nayar, IANS,
Paris : India’s Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma hopes the mini-ministerial of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that New Delhi will be hosting in September will be able to lay out a clear roadmap for the Doha Development Round negotiations that have been blocked for nearly a year.
Sharma told mediapersons here at the end of his two-day visit on the occasion of the OECD Forum where a ministerial meeting with some of the key WTO member states was held. Sharma had meetings with several of his counterparts from the major nations around the world. OECD is the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Sharma said as the talks had been stalled for a long while, it had resulted in the growth of an underbrush of issues which could threaten the entire concept of multilateralism.
“We were hearing a lot things about how the entire way that the negotiations had been conducted should be reviewed or that there was an attempt to introduce new issues in the negotiation process and some were even questioning the need for these discussions,” Sharma said.
“However, over my meetings here in Paris and also those in Bali, I get a feeling that these issues have been removed and that there is an atmosphere of positivity. This is a reason why all the ministers have accepted the Indian initiative of resumption of talks in Geneva.”
He also emphasised that this was a mere resumption of negotiations and not a relaunch. “There is a world of difference in these two terms. Relaunch of talks can be construed as starting afresh from point zero while here the member states have accepted the Indian proposal to consider two documents – on the agriculture and NAMA issues – as the base documents for resuming the negotiations,” he clarified.
“I hope that at the September meeting, we, as political leaders, will be able to lay out a clear roadmap for the negotiations ahead and that our negotiators in Geneva will be able to take the process to its logical conclusion,” he said.
Rejecting the idea that India was expected to send a positive signal or a concession, Sharma said the Indian initiative in relaunching the talks was in itself the positive signal. He also refused to be drawn into the specifics of the issues where discussions had been held between him and his counterparts.
“I would not like to have a label and I would not like to give a label. So, there is no softening or hardening of positions, there are no countries that are acting as the bad boys or disrupting the talk, instead there is unanimity about the need to restart these talks,” he said.
But he also made it clear that the issues of importance to the developing nations – including India – remained crucial and that the negotiations would have to keep the needs of these countries in mind.
“You cannot compare the needs of a subsistence farmer with barely 2 hectares of land with those of a farmer with 20,000 hectares and neither can you compare the needs of a country where the GDP per head is less than $1,000 with those of the countries where it is $50,000,” he said.
Incidentally, with the change in both Indian and US trade ministers, some members of the OECD privately expressed hope that the positions of both India and US may soften, leading to a a breakthrough. However, Sharma clearly ruled out any softening or change of India’s position on a sensitive issue like subsistence agriculture.
(Ranvir Nayar can be contacted [email protected])