The Hindu Business Line : Deadline vs. development

The Commerce Minister, Mr Kamal Nath, did well last week to once more pour cold water on the WTO Director-General, Mr Pascal Lamy's exhortation (made at a New Delhi seminar) that the Doha Round negotiations had to be completed by the end of June, when the `fast-track' negotiating authority for the US President would end, if the Round was to see the light of day before 2009, that is, following the next US Presidential elections. Last April, Mr Lamy had made the same point (again in Delhi) to which Mr Kamal Nath had responded that while no one disagreed with the call for expedition, "the fact remains that mere urgency cannot bring about a solution."

As he explained, June 30 was not a `fixed deadline' in a formal sense, but merely an indication to WTO members that the setting for the finalisation of the talks would change after that date. More critical than the deadline is to get an `acceptable' Doha Round. Last April, Mr Kamal Nath had described that acceptability as promoting the "essential development character of the Round which should be reflected in what the members were willing to commit." The problem is that while Mr Lamy has been focusing on the "window of opportunity," the content of the negotiations has made barely any progress ever since the talks (suspended last year) resumed earlier this year. No doubt the WTO chief is aware of this, and that he has not been able to persuade Washington and Brussels to concede more than what they have to get the talks moving once again. This is perhaps why he has, in recent months, stepped up pressure on New Delhi to concede more both in the non-agriculture market access (NAMA) and agriculture without realising that such `progress' would knock the bottom out of the `development' content of the Doha Round.

In fact, Mr Lamy began his New Delhi speech last week by focusing on ways "to save the Doha Round and deliver on development." The truth is that neither the EU nor the US is in a mood to strengthen the development-content of the Round, primarily because of domestic compulsions. But it is equally true that the developing economies cannot go beyond a point in easing import barriers across sectors (mainly agriculture) if millions of their citizens are to be protected from economic ruin. As the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, reiterated the point recently, farming is a way of life for a vast section and should not, therefore, be seen as just another economic activity, which can be tinkered with by blinkered negotiators sitting around a table in Geneva. The outlook for the Doha Round is bleak because it may be too much to expect the rich countries to make further concessions to the poor, a policy issue which, on paper at least, forms the very philosophical basis of the Round.