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India can draw its strength from the African countries which have decided to strongly oppose negotiations on any new issue, such as e-commerce and transparency in domestic regulation, that developed countries may try to initiate in the on-going World Trade Organisation’s eleventh Ministerial Conference (MC 11) in Buenos Aires.
“We are encouraged to see that the Trade Ministers from African countries have reinforced their stand opposing negotiations on new issues at the MC 11. This completely gels with the position India has been taking,” a government official said.
On Sunday, just before the formal launch of the MC-11, the African Group of more than 40 countries held their Ministerial meeting to build on their unity.
Later, in a briefing with the Civil Society Organisations (CSO) from the continent, the representative from the African Group pointed out that there was unanimity amongst members that rules in e-commerce could divide Africa and make it impossible to develop its digital economy. “Electronic trading is good, but the mistake should not be made between binding rules in the multilateral space and trading electronically and that the two are different,” the representative was quoted in a press release by African CSOs.
Read: Delhi resists attempts to push investment facilitation
India, too, has opposed proposed negotiations on e-commerce on similar grounds. This was an important topic for discussion at a lunch hosted for developing countries on Sunday by Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu that included prominent African countries like Kenya, Benin, Burkina Faso, Egypt and South Africa.
The African Group has also opposed proposals seeking that any measure in the area of domestic regulation must be published to ensure ‘transparency’ and allow entities to comment and their interest taken into account. The proposal also requires that the measure must be based on ‘objective criteria’, and be ‘reasonable’. “These are intrusive and eroding in terms of the capacity of African governments to regulate,” the representative from the African Group said.
This, too, is reflective of India’s position which has rejected a US proposal that members be penalised if there is a delay in their notification of measures to the WTO.
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