The Hindu Business Line : `India, Brazil alliance key to secure gains of Doha agenda'

INDIA and Brazil, which formed a pre-Cancun alliance to successfully bring into focus the trade-distorting domestic support and export subsidies being doled out by rich agricultural countries, would hold on as they had learnt from the past on how to stick together to achieve positive and productive results, according to the Group of 20 Chairman, Mr Luiz Felipe Seixas Correa.

Mr Felipe Seixas, who is also Brazil's Ambassador to the World Trade Organisation and is in town to participate in the ongoing International Textiles and Clothing Bureau (ITCB) Council meeting, told Business Line on the sidelines that "for the first time in the history of trade negotiations, we have a powerful coalition of developing countries".

He added: "We are able to influence the content, structure and direction of the negotiations in a way that is compatible with development aspirations of developing countries." It is of utmost priority for us to preserve it in the coming years so as to secure the development gains of the Doha Development Agenda (DDA).

Mr Felipe Seixas also said, "We are successful. We have already got a mandate at Doha which called for substantial reduction in trade-distorting agricultural domestic support and phase-out of export subsidies in the advanced countries and that is what we want to do and try to get them fulfil this mandate."

He said that in the past, "when we negotiated on a separate basis, we did not get enough strength to engage in negotiations and that we ended up divided. No longer we are divided. We are determined and we are able to co-ordinate our position and we are able to have much more strength in negotiations."

On the headway being made in the alliance of G-3, comprising India, Brazil and South Africa coming from three continents, Mr Felipe Seixas said: "It is working and we all three have been developing countries. We have similar systemic concerns about the stability of the world, about the fairness in trade relations, about developing countries having a view in major decision and we share an aspiration to eventually become permanent members of the UN Security Council."

There is, thus, "a lot of commonality" in G-3 grouping of developing countries.

On bilateral relations, the trade volume between India and Brazil has been growing by leaps and bounds.

"We have a lot of technical co-operation going on. More and more we will converge for a great deal of co-operation and we have only way to go and that is forward."