India has rejected an informal proposal made by the European Union (EU) and Canada for a multilateral investment agreement with a provision for an investor-to-state dispute settlement (ISDS) at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The proposal was discussed at an informal meeting of key WTO members, including India, China, Brazil, Japan and Australia.
Commerce & Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that they have rejected the informal proposal completely as they want anything to do with investments to be a bilateral thing. And they don’t believe in making investments a subject of multilateral disputes. Sitharaman added that they will have investment treaty in which companies can take the sovereign or even the regional governments to court. She also said that anything with regard to investments, they wanted to be settled by the domestic laws and courts first and only after that, an aggrieved party should appeal outside.
Sitharaman has said that other WTO member countries, including Argentina and Brazil, too did not support the move. So at this stage, to have this template for a multi-lateral approach to investment may be immature. However, the she added that India put its view informally as this was an informal discussion of WTO member countries.
On WTO issues, the minister has said that in December the countries discussed the forthcoming ministerial conference in Argentina. She also said that they reinforce that the Bali and Nairobi issues to be fulfilled and added that WTO DG Roberto Azevedo admitted that although Nairobi meeting was successful, the process was not right. She said that India wants resolution on providing safeguards to poor farmers and permanent solution for public stock holding purposes.