The Hindu Business Line : Doha: India committed but no compromise

New Delhi, July 31 The Union Commerce and Industry Minister, Mr Kamal Nath, said that India and other developing countries would not “compromise” on the development content of the Doha Round, while reiterating India’s firm commitment to engage at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to move the Doha Development Round to a successful end.

Addressing a news conference on his return from Geneva after nine days of intensive negotiations to firm up parameters or numbers for the Doha talks of trade liberalisation, Mr Nath described the collapse of the Geneva talks on Tuesday as a “serious setback to the developing countries”. The mini ministerial of 30 countries ended in a fiasco in arriving at a consensus on subsidy level and import tariffs on agriculture and industrial goods.

Mr Nath said that while there would always be commercial interests guiding global trade, these could not take primacy over the livelihood interests of billions of poor and vulnerable farmers of the developing world. Stating that the talks failed on special products which allow developing countries to take less than formula cuts on their vulnerable products and special safeguard mechanism (SSM), Mr Nath said SSM was designed to safeguard the farmers from abrupt import surges and price declines by permitting an additional safeguard duty over and above the bound rate.

The Minister said the trigger for an SSM was crucial because it determines when a safeguard duty could be slapped. The volume trigger for such special products, which would either take zero or low tariff cuts, was sought to be fixed at 40 per cent higher than the average imports of the last three years by the US, whereas India and other developing countries said only 10 per cent higher than the average imports of the last three years.

Mr Nath said the 40 per cent trigger was much higher than the trigger for the special safeguards, which the developed countries themselves have used since the inception of the Uruguay Round (1995) to safeguard the commercial interests of their agriculture. He made it clear that the lack of consensus on SSM was not an issue affecting only India as it affects more than 100 of the least developed and developing countries.

Safeguard mechanism was not the only issue on which headway could not be made. Other important developing country issues such as cotton, preference erosion, duty free and quota free for LDCs tropical products and fishery subsidies on which discussions were not held.

He also criticised the US and the European Union for maintaining non-trade-distorting subsidies in billions of dollars for their famrers.