As many as two dozen countries have agreed to send their political representatives to participate in the informal Ministerial meeting of select World Trade Organisation (WTO) countries in New Delhi this month.

While many of the political representatives are not Trade Ministers, Commerce Ministry officials said it would not hamper the talks as the participants were all dealing with WTO affairs.

“The members that have confirmed participation include China, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Brazil, Uruguay, Uganda, the EU, Canada, the US and Turkey,” said JS Deepak, India’s permanent representative to the WTO.

The countries that have expressed inability to send representatives include Jamaica, Mali and Vietnam. Pakistan is among the 10 countries that have not yet responded.

There will not be a fixed agenda of the meeting and countries would be free to discuss whatever they wished. However, there would be a Chair’s statement by Suresh Prabhu, Commerce and Industry Minister, at the end of the conference on March 20.

“The idea is to provide a platform in which countries can sit in a relaxed way and discuss how to deal with the current impasse. It is more of an ice-breaker,” said Rita Teaotia, Commerce Secretary.

The WTO Ministerial meet at Buenos Aires in December 2017 failed to deliver in most areas as the US mostly kept away from the talks and many developed countries were more interested in pushing new issues such as e-commerce and investment facilitation rather than negotiate on the Doha issues (issues flowing from the yet-to-be-completed Doha development round).

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