India has reservations on the introduction of new issues such as investment facilitation in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) due to which fundamental issues in agriculture and development get neglected, Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu said.

Speaking at the informal gathering of Trade Ministers from WTO-member countries in Paris recently, Prabhu also rejected discussions on binding multilateral rules for e-commerce stating that it was premature to do so and members should stick to the agreed work programme for e-commerce.

Twenty-eight member countries of the WTO, including India, and the Director-General of the WTO Roberto Azevedo attended the informal meeting.

A number of countries at the WTO, including powerful members like the US, the EU and Australia, are trying to launch negotiations on new issues such as investment facilitation, e-commerce and gender. At the last WTO Ministerial meeting in Buenos Aires in December 2017, some of the proponents of new issues said that they may launch plurilateral discussions if all members are not ready to join in.

Alluding to such references, Prabhu said while some countries viewed plurilateral discussions as a stepping stone to multilateral agreements, such initiatives could, on the contrary, weaken the multilateral trading system and undermine the inclusive institutional structure of the WTO.

The Minister said that there were already a number of Ministerial mandates to guide work at the WTO and negotiators have been working for years on many issues. He said that work should be resumed based on existing mandates, declarations and decisions, expressing the belief that it would be counterproductive and harmful to the system to ignore the Ministerial mandates and all the work done so far and re-set the negotiations.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW