The eleventh Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation in Buenos Aires, where Trade Ministers from 164 member countries will attempt to work out agreements or future work programmes in the crucial areas of farm and fisheries subsidies, food security through public stockholding and e-commerce services -- will formally begin late evening on Sunday.

India, and various other countries and groups, are already meeting informally to explore chances of a break-through in the key areas. India's demand for a 'permanent solution' for public stock holding has been identified as a deliverable at the MC 11. But the country has said that only a solution better than the existing 'peace clause' will be acceptable.

“We are not ready to accept anything less appealing that the peace clause that we already negotiated in the earlier ministerials. A permanent solution needs to be better than that in terms of less onerous conditions. A solution without improvement is not acceptable to us,” said a senior Indian official.

Commerce & Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu, in his meeting with the G-33 group (47 countries with large population dependent on agriculture) and South African Trade Minister Rob Davies on Saturday, re-affirmed the countries' focus on getting a favourable permanent solution and special safeguard mechanism (SSM) to protect agriculture items against import surge by raising duties.

“The G-33 has stressed on the need for SSM for developing countries. Agriculture is important for livelihood security of farmers....I strongly reiterated need for concerted action on improvement in public stock holding,” Prabhu tweeted after the meeting.

In the MC in Bali in 2013, India and other members of the G-33 group (with a large population dependent on agriculture) were promised a permanent solution to treating subsidies for public stockholding by 2017. Such subsidies on Minimum Support Price programmes, as per rules, are subject to a cap of 10 per cent of production value.

The peace clause, which protects countries against action from other members in case the cap is breached, comes with a number of onerous conditions that India wants removed as part of the permanent solution. “We want the notification condition which states that a country needs to update information on all crop related data before seeking relief from subsidy cap to go,” the official said. He added that it was impossible to meet as was demonstrated in the fact that only nine countries have managed to update notifications without a time lag so far.

In a recent informal meeting of the Committee on Agriculture (CoA) chairperson Stephen Ndun'gu Karau (Kenya) pointed out that public stock holding was an issue where an outcome at MC11 is possible. “That being said, some serious work will need to be done in Buenos Aires,” he added.

Discussions on the permanent solution will take place in one of the five discussion groups which will hold negotiations on key issues at MC 11. The other discussion groups are on e-commerce, fisheries subsidies, development issues and services.

India would insist on a work programme for a favourable permanent solution after the MC 11, if it is not offered a satisfactory resolution during the meeting. “We are not ready to accept just anything that is doled out to us,” he said.

The MC 11 will conclude on December 13.

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