The Hindu Business Line : Australia to help India progress in Doha Round of trade talks

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Chennai Feb. 27 The Australian Trade Minister, Mr Warren Truss, has said that he will take up with the Union Commerce and Industry Minister, Mr Kamal Nath, the need to achieve progress on the Doha Round of multilateral trade talks.

During his meeting, scheduled for later this week in Delhi, the Australian Trade Minister said he would express Australia's willingness to work with India to try and broker solutions that might be acceptable to other trading countries.

Reducing Tariffs

Mr Truss felt that the talks on the Doha round of the WTO had got stuck because none of the parties concerned had moved sufficiently enough to secure a high quality agreement. The Europeans had indicated a willingness to reduce tariffs, which was not enough.

Likewise, the US had announced a Farm Bill, which made some cuts in farm subsidies but not as much as the world hoped for.

On the other hand, neither India nor Brazil had indicated a willingness to open up their markets substantially for non-agricultural products. To a question, the Australian Trade Minister said: "This year is a window of opportunity and if it is lost, it will take some time to resurrect the talks (on the Doha round)."

Ministerial Meeting

If the talks broke up with a "high degree of intransigence or ill will," then it would be fairly brave WTO if it wanted to talk again or if it wanted to go through the experience again. More than having to work around issues as the US presidential elections and the EU reviewing its Budget next year, there was also the natural anxiety caused by a failure.

Mr Truss, who is leading an Australian business delegation to India, will hold talks with his Indian counterpart in Delhi and also attend a joint ministerial meeting.

On the Doha Round, the Minister said it was important to achieve some breakthrough on the multilateral trade talks fairly soon, "within the next month or two so that we can reach a stage where there is agreement this calendar year."

He said there was a tendency for one country to wait for somebody else to make the first move and that was why Australia had put on the table a proposal referred to as five-plus-five.

This would have enabled the Americans and the Europeans to make more substantial cuts together without either of them having to face the domestic difficulties of leading in front of the other parties and also include in it the need for the developing countries to limit the number of special products to a relatively small number, like five.

To a question, Mr Truss said Australia believed bilateral trade agreements needed to be on top of what had been achieved at the WTO.

Australia had signed free trade agreements with Singapore, Thailand, the US and New Zealand, and was having discussions with the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean), China and Japan and had just begun preliminary discussions with Korea. He said India was also working on an FTA with Asean and so it was likely that Australia and India would be able to build on those kinds of agreements into the future.

Asked whether there had been a re-think on supplying uranium to India, Mr Truss said Australia maintained its position that it would not be prepared to supply uranium to countries that had not signed the nuclear non-proliferation agreement and did not have bilateral arrangements to prevent on-sale of uranium to other countries.

Australia recognised that India was interested in developing its nuclear power industry and Australia had 38 per cent of the world's recoverable uranium.

Monitoring agreement

"So there is logical reason for Australia and India to engage further in discussing these issues," he said and added that "at this stage our position has not changed, but we are monitoring the agreement and the discussion between India and the US."

Optimistic

Mr Truss was optimistic about the future of Indo-Australia trade, with India exporting services, especially information technology, and finished products, and Australia exporting commodities. He pointed out that Australia's trade with China had increased six-fold in 10 years and saw no reason why this could not happen with India too.

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