Bali can be salvaged

It is now a battle of nerves at the Bali Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) with India reiterating its position of finding a permanent solution to the food security issue. Addressing an extremely well-attended press conference, Commerce Minister Anand Sharma clarified that India was not blocking progress unnecessarily at Bali as was being made out but was as keen as any other member country for finding a solution to end the impasse.

What that means is, Bali can conclude successfully if members agree to a package consisting of the existing agreement for the least developed countries and some of the other issues on the table, while deferring some of the controversial issues in trade facilitation and food security back to Geneva for a conclusion.

It is important to note that two issues in agriculture - export competition and better administration of tariff rate quotas - could be agreed on at Bali. There are 10 issues that will have to be agreed on Bali and, of these on eight issues, India has expressed its acceptance. Only on some unresolved issues in Section 1 of trade facilitation and food security, India still has reservations that need to be addressed. This means the issue of a complete failure at Bali can be averted.

However, what is important is that slowly countries have started openly expressing support for the Indian position. South African Minister Rob Davis in a conversation with this writer said his country understood the position taken by India. He said since New Delhi had clarified that none of this produce that would be purchased by the government for food stock piling would find its way into the international market, Pretoria had no problem in giving a positive nod to the Indian stand.

Pakistan, on the other hand, has been critical of the Indian proposal stating that there would leakages under India's purchase of rice under the public distribution system and some of the rice would enter the Pakistani market thereby distorting global trade.

Analysts at Bali have started looking at what could be the way forward from this deadlock. Some people believe the best way forward would be to package areas where consensus exists and put that into a package and send the rest back to Geneva with a clear negotiating mandate. But the problem of that solution is that it may not provide a face-saving proposition to all countries, especially in the developed world.

The second would be to take everything back to Geneva and re-negotiate the whole package. But most people discard this thought, as it would clearly mean a failure of Bali.

Finally, there is a thought that while all issues are resolved on the issue of food security, members agree to a watertight negotiation at Geneva within a time frame. This also may not fly with India as it would address the main issue at hand.

Therefore, there is still a great amount of uncertainty, and with just one day left, participants here are hoping that countries will remain flexible.

The writer is principal advisor, APJ-SLG Law Offices