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Foreign Trade
WTO official not in favour of regional trade pacts
Our Bureau
New Delhi
,
Dec. 6
A senior WTO official has cautioned India against joining the bandwagon for regional trade agreements (RTAs) and free trade agreements (FTAs) and said WTO would institute a mechanism to monitor whether the agreements contributed to multilateral process and reduction in protectionism.
"I share concerns on India going in for FTAs and RTAs. They are not as effective as multi-lateral agreements," said the WTO Director General, Mr Supachai Panitchpakdi, at the Indian Economic Summit organised by the World Economic Forum and Confederation of Indian Industry in the capital on Monday.
Asserting that multilateralism must get primacy over RTAs and FTAs, Mr Supachai said this should be the correct approach as studies have shown that these agreements brought down tariffs only by about 10 per cent in comparison to 25 per cent by multi-lateral agreements.
Pointing out that multiple rules of origin and tariff lines can be both confusing and costly, Mr Supachai said it was in India's interest to spend the same energy to promote multilateralism, since an early conclusion of the Doha Round would result in larger benefits than RTAs and FTAs.
Lamenting the lack of mechanism to monitor the contribution of these agreements to multilateralism, he said some mechanism was being worked out in the form of peer-review to see if they were building blocks for multilateralism.
Mr Supachai also said that India should carry out agricultural reforms to become a global supplier of agricultural products.
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