India has said that it wants World Trade Organisation (WTO) members to implement the issues that were finalized in the Ministerial meeting in Bali in 2013, before making any fresh commitments in WTO’s ministerial conference to be held in Nairobi next week. The issue includes trade facilitation, food security and least developed countries matters - as a single undertaking.
Commerce and industry minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that India is not willing to make binding commitments on new areas such as investment, competition, labour, government procurement, environment, climate change and global value chains that the developed countries have been trying to introduce into the WTO mandate. Sitharaman said, “The discussion part on new issues is fine with us, but we will certainly not take binding commitments in new areas”.
WTO members failed to sign the trade facilitation protocol by July 31, as agreed to in the Bali Ministerial, as India refused to fall in line. In the post-Bali discussions, the developed countries started putting conditions for even beginning talks on finding a permanent solution to the problems of food security. It seemed they were interested in only trade facilitation agreement (TFA). Hence, the India insisted that the entire Bali package be implemented as a single undertaking.
WTO's tenth ministerial conference is set to take place from December 15-18. The grievance is that many things which are part of the development agenda don't have a work programme. Even after Bali in 2013, there is no work programme like there was for trade facilitation agreement. While India had agreed to ratify the trade facilitation agreement, the clarity is yet to emerge on the rest of the Bali package. The commerce department has circulated an inter-ministerial note on TFA and the Cabinet will consider it soon.
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