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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Food security decision at WTO important: Here is the reason why -TS Vishwanath

Food security decision at WTO important: Here is the reason why -TS Vishwanath

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published Published on Dec 14, 2017   modified Modified on Dec 14, 2017
-The Financial Express

There has been an ongoing debate over India’s stand at the WTO Ministerial Conference on the issue of public stockholding for food security purposes, including in this newspaper. There have been strong arguments on whether India’s stand is correct in the context of the subsidy phase out, in various sectors that the Modi government has been following over the past couple of years. But when this issue is viewed in the larger context of how trade negotiations have been conducted at multilateral forums and India’s role in groupings of like-minded countries, the matter assumes a different significance. Importantly, public stockholding for food security is not an issue of India alone. It is an issue that the G33 coalition has been advocating even prior to the Bali Ministerial of December 2013. The Group itself was created before the Cancun Ministerial and comprised of over 40 developing country members with defensive interests in agriculture.

The point that the coalition, with India being seen as the leading voice, has been making and demanding is the delivery of a commitment made by member countries, at Bali, to negotiate on an agreement for a permanent solution, for adoption by the 11th Ministerial Conference in 2017. The issue is of the WTO memberships commitment to earlier promises. If countries renege on this issue, then this could set a precedent for other such defaults on commitments by the membership, thereby weakening the very edifice of multilateral rule-making. This was seen as a quid pro quo for accepting a Trade Facilitation Agreement at Bali and, therefore, now needs a logical conclusion.

Importantly, as has been pointed out by many experts, the acceptance of a permanent solution does not, in any way, impact India immediately. Given the fact that in 2014 in Geneva, New Delhi insisted on the permanence of the Bali Peace Clause till a permanent solution is adopted, ensures that all the existing product-specific public stockholding measures used by India can easily continue for a few more years without even using the peace clause as New Delhi is within the acceptable band of support that can be provided by developing countries. Developing countries have a ceiling of domestic support of 10% of the value of production of the concerned crop, called the product-specific de minimis support. For India, the product-specific domestic support at present on rice is at about 5% and on wheat it is reported to be 0%. Thus, if Buenos Aires fails to deliver a permanent solution on the issue of public stockholding for food security purposes, India will remain unscathed, at least for the present.

However, while there is apparently no immediate commercial impact for India, there may be a need to broad base the discussion on why India should aggressively pursue the issue of public stockholding at the WTO and look at the possible implications.

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The Financial Express, 14 December, 2017, http://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/food-security-decision-at-wto-important-here-is-the-reason-why/973055/


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