Approval of all members needed to include investment facilitation in WTO talks: India

India has said that it was not being obstructionist by blocking the World Trade Organization’s General Council last week from including investment facilitation in the agenda for discussions as the matter fell within the scope of domestic policy.

“We were happy to approve all the agenda items of the general council meeting except the one on investments. Investment was dropped from the negotiating agenda in 2003 when it did not get the explicit consensus of members at the Cancun Ministerial meeting. It cannot move forward without the mandate of all members,” a senior Commerce Ministry official told BusinessLine .

The item was included in the agenda of the General Council after five different papers on investment facilitation were circulated by other countries, including Russia, China, Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, Hong Kong (China), and Australia.

India’s stance got the support of Uganda, Equador, Bolivia and South Africa, which all agree that even a non-binding agreement in investments was not acceptable.

The United States, too, is opposed to inclusion of investments in the agenda and it recently said at a G-20 meeting that no outcome was acceptable to it in the area.

The General Council Chairperson plans to hold informal negotiations with members to break the deadlock.

New Delhi believes that the WTO needs to concentrate on the agenda already on the table for the next Ministerial in Buenos Aires in December. “There are only seven months to go for the Ministerial meeting. Instead of trying to expand the negotiating agenda, the WTO has to deliver in areas such as a permanent solution for food subsidies and special safeguard measures,” the official said.

The Bali and Nairobi Ministerial declarations mentioned December 2017 as the deadline for the permanent solution, he added.

New Delhi is seeking changes in WTO rules so it can continue subsidies for food procurement even when they breach the level of 10 per cent of output fixed for trade distorting support. It also wants safeguards that would allow it and other developing countries to increase import duties on farm goods beyond caps when imports surge and domestic prices crash.

Attempts are being made by developed country members, including the US and the EU, to junk the ongoing Doha Development Round launched in 2001 so that they are free to introduce new issues into the negotiations such as investments, e-commerce and government procurement.

New Delhi, which is re-working its bilateral investment treaties with its trade partners to protect the government against international arbitration, is unlikely to budge from its position on excluding investments from the multilateral trade agenda.

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