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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | At Upcoming WTO Meet, India and Other Developing Countries to Try and Keep Focus on Doha Agenda -Noor Mohammad

At Upcoming WTO Meet, India and Other Developing Countries to Try and Keep Focus on Doha Agenda -Noor Mohammad

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published Published on Nov 23, 2017   modified Modified on Nov 23, 2017
-TheWire.in

Developed countries want to include new issues like e-commerce, investment facilitation and government procurement in the discussion.

New Delhi:
Battle lines have been drawn between developed and developing countries over the agenda for the forthcoming WTO ministerial conference at Buenos Aires, with India saying it will oppose discussion on new issues like e-commerce, investment facilitation and government procurement.

If India remains firm on its stand, the upcoming ministerial, to be held from December 10-13, could fail to produce any substantive outcome. But it remains to be seen how far India can fend off the developed world’s pressure on inclusion of new issues in the ministerial agenda.

The experience of the previous WTO Ministerial Conference, Nairobi in 2015, does not inspire much confidence that India would be able to thwart moves to push new issues onto the WTO agenda. There was no unambiguous affirmation on sticking to the Doha agenda at Nairobi, despite India strongly pitching for it.

The ministerial is the highest decision-making body of the WTO and meets at least once every two years to give political direction to the organisation.

As a priority, India wants the WTO to focus discussion on the Doha development agenda, without being distracted by new issues.

The Doha round of WTO negotiations was launched in the wake of the September 11 attack on the twin towers in the US by the Al Qaeda. The exigency of building a wider political consensus for a global response against terror forced developed countries to agree on giving some unilateral concessions to the developing countries.

Doha negotiations have dragged on since 2001, without any hope of conclusion. The problem with the Doha agenda is that nothing will be agreed on unless everything is agreed on. So no further progress is possible even on agriculture and services, areas where India has a lot to gain and where negotiations had started before the launch of the Doha round.

Much has changed globally since the Doha round was launched. Labour-intensive manufacturing has shifted to developing countries, causing massive job losses in developed countries. As a reaction, trade protectionism has gained ground in such countries.

Obviously, developed countries are now reluctant on taking forward negotiations on the Doha agenda.

During an informal meeting at the WTO, developed countries including Canada, Australia, South Korea, Norway, Paraguay and the EU circulated a restricted draft ministerial decision to establish “a working party” with the mandate to carry out negotiations on trade-related aspects of electronic commerce.

Prior to the latest proposal from the EU and other members, Japan and Russia too circulated their respective submissions seeking to establish a “working group”.

Japan claimed that all “existing WTO Agreements apply to electronic commerce”. According to the proposal submitted by Japan, even issues such as the free flow of data located on computer servers without data localisation requirements, permanent moratorium on customs duties, non-disclosure of source code and prohibition of forced technology transfer will come under the purview of future negotiations as and when they are launched.

The US too has made a strong pitch for bringing e-commerce onto the negotiating agenda.

In contrast, the predominant view within the government is that unless India has its own national policy on e-commerce and investment facilitation, it should not be making commitments in the WTO. India’s assessment is that pacts on e-commerce investment facilitation would limit its policy-making space.

India has reaffirmed its position on e-commerce at the informal gathering of WTO trade ministers in Marrakesh on October 9-10. The meet was held to seek inputs from members for preparing the Buenos Aires agenda.

Leading discussions on behalf of the developing world at the Marrakesh meet, commerce minister Suresh Prabhu called upon WTO members to first deal with the issues already under negotiation before moving on to new ones.

Prabhu also stressed the need for adopting a transparent and inclusive process of negotiation at the WTO and completing all preparatory work before the conference, so that only those issues which are ready for a conclusion are taken up for deliberation.

Please click here to read more.

TheWire.in, 20 November, 2017, https://thewire.in/198565/wto-india-developing-countries-doha-development-agenda/


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