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India will participate in a mini-ministerial meeting of trade ministers from select World Trade Organisation (WTO) member countries at Marrakesh in October to finalise the agenda for the Ministerial meeting in Buenos Aires later in the year.
This follows complaints from countries, including India, that the Nairobi Ministerial meeting in December 2015 was not handled well due to lack of adequate preparation, a government official said.
“India as well as some other countries had brought it to the WTO Director General’s notice that the Nairobi Ministerial meeting was almost a disaster as all negotiations were left for the Trade Ministers to carry out at the meeting itself. As a result there were numerous small-group meetings that kept taking place and so many members did not have a clue as to what was happening,” the official told BusinessLine .
The objective of the Marrakesh meeting would be to arrive at an agenda that would include items that have been negotiated well at the various negotiating groups at the WTO so that crucial decisions are not left for the Buenos Aires meet in December.
New Delhi, on its part, would like to ensure that the mandate on public stockholding which flows from the Bali and Nairobi Ministerial meetings gets fulfilled.
“We will insist on a permanent solution to the problem of public stockholding so that the concerns of developing countries on implementing their food security programmes without the fear of attracting penalties are addressed,” the official said.
On the mid-year review of the Foreign Trade Policy, that is scheduled sometime next month, the official said that it would try to address problems that exporters are facing after the implementation of the GST regime. “Exporters are definitely facing liquidity issues as many exemptions have been withdrawn and they have to wait for refunds. We have to see how these problems could be sorted out,” the official said.
The Commerce Ministry is in talks with the Finance Ministry on the matter and after an agreement is reached between the two on the matter, the GST Council would be approached, the official added.
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