-The Hindu “The current version of the text added new burdensome conditions that would impose additional limits on countries using non-voluntary licensing” Six experts from India, South Africa and the United States have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to reject the current version of a proposal at the World Trade Organisation on intellectual property waivers for COVID-19 medicines, that includes vaccines, drugs and diagnostics. In October 2020, at the WTO’s Trade Related...
More »SEARCH RESULT
‘Compromise’ on TRIPS waiver is a sellout -Latha Jishnu
-Down to Earth Tough new conditions emerge in the compromise deal to ease WTO intellectual property barriers to production of COVID-19 medical tools We are back to square one. Back to the beginning after 18 months of a wearying, tortuous series of negotiations that carried on while millions of lives hung in the balance — and still do. The waiver of intellectual property (IP) rights on medicines, vaccines and diagnostics to fight the...
More »Get these wrinkles out of the South Asian textile story -Syed Munir Khasru
-The Hindu Ensuring government support for financial incentives, upgrading technologies and reskilling labour are key challenges South Asia became a major player in the global textiles and clothing market with the onset of the third wave of global production. Bangladesh joined the league in the 1980s, owing to the outbreak of the civil war in Sri Lanka. Supportive industrial policy was an instrumental factor in the 1990s, with zero duty on raw...
More »Implications of futures contracts ban on select commodities -Suresh P Iyengar
-The Hindu Business Line Here is the BL Explainer on futures trading ban on select commodities, its benefits, controlling prices, and experts take on it. * What is futures trading? Futures trading is an agreement between two people to buy or sell a commodity at an agreed price on a future date. As per futures contracts traded on an exchange, one party consents to buy a given quantity of commodity with specified quality...
More »The WTO’s challenge to MSP is another frontier to cross -Prabhash Ranjan
-The Hindu The need is to convince farmers of other effective policy interventions that are World Trade Organization compatible The demand of farmers to provide a legal guarantee for the minimum support price (MSP) for their produce has triggered a nationwide debate. Some believe it would be “fiscally ruinous” to procure all the 23 crops for which MSP is announced annually. Others contend that procuring these crops would be a logistical nightmare....
More »