The Hindu Business Line : ‘More work needs to be done to narrow differences’

India on Thursday said that it is ready for a Ministerial meeting of the WTO, but, a lot of work still needs to be done to narrow differences and converge on the recently issued revised agriculture and non-agricultural market access (NAMA) texts before identifying a safe landing zone.

Speaking to the media from Auckland, New Zealand, a copy of his statement made available by the Commerce Ministry, Mr Kamal Nath pointed out that the Doha Round was an opportunity to altogether eliminate Overall Trade Distorting Domestic Support (OTDS). “Instead, all of us at the Hong Kong Ministerial settled for steep and effective cuts in OTDS. Even this goal now seems to be vanishing”.

The Minister said that for the US, the lowest number in the text ($13 billion) was nearly double the current applied levels of domestic support. “Where is the need for 100 per cent headroom as a cushion?” the Minister quipped.

Special products

Reacting to the Chair’s proposals on Special Products, Mr Nath questioned why the lower cap number of total Special Products had been arbitrarily reduced from 12 to 8 per cent. While there seemed to be an attempt to raise the level of ambition on this core concern of developing countries, there was no concurrent movement either in reducing OTDS or the percentage of Sensitive Products, on which the proposals have remained frozen since July 2007. This was disconcerting, he added.

Another major area of concern in agriculture was the issue of Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM). “The draft proposals on SSM, including the absurdly low number of products for which the SSM could be invoked during a year, the threshold levels for the price and volume triggers and the cross-check between the two independent triggers, are even more stringent than proposals for the Special Safeguards, which are going to be used primarily by developed countries,” Mr Nath said.

On NAMA, Mr Nath observed, “The text has ignored the core mandate of the Doha Round of less than full reciprocity in reduction commitments and comparability in ambition between NAMA and agriculture.”

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