Friday, August 1, 2008

Indian minister speaks on WTO mini-ministerial meet

by Ed Roberts

Mr. Kamal Nath, Indian Minister of Commerce & Industry, announced that the primary objective of the Doha Round is to put the development dimension of international trade on centre stage.

While talking to media persons in New Delhi, on the outcome of the recently concluded WTO Ministerial Conference at Geneva, the minister said that while there would always be commercial interests guiding trade, these interests cannot take primacy over the livelihood interests of billions of poor and vulnerable farmers of the developing world. In the context of the current food crisis and the abnormal rise in food prices, it has become all the more important to preserve and protect the livelihood security of poor farmers and the long term food security of developing nations.

In view of the subsistence nature of farming in developing countries and the need to insulate the poor and vulnerable farmers of developing countries from the shock of large tariff reductions, the instruments of Special Products and Special Safeguard Mechanism were built into the Doha mandate, he said.

He further said that the July Framework and the Hong Kong Declaration built upon it. While the Special Products are designed to allow developing countries to take less than formula cuts on their vulnerable products, specially the products affecting the livelihoods of subsistence farmers and affecting the food security of a nation, the SSM is designed to protect the farmers from sudden import surges and price dips by applying an additional safeguard duty over and above the bound rate.

The lack of consensus on SSM was not an issue affecting only India. It affected more than 100 of the least developed and developing countries. The G33 (which has 46 members), the African Group (with 53 members), the African-Caribbean-Pacific Group, the Small Vulnerable Economies, together having a membership of more than 100 countries, had expressed their strong views on the volume and price triggers.

 

 

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