India to demand farm subsidy cut by rich nations

The issue forms the core of the Doha round of talks for a global trade deal at the World Trade Organization

India is planning to target the agricultural subsidies offered by developed countries to their farmers, something that forms the core of the Doha round of talks for a global trade deal at the World Trade Organization (WTO).

India is likely to raise the issue during an informal meeting of heads of delegations with WTO director-general Roberto Azevedo. In the meeting, India will be represented by its ambassador to the WTO Anjali Prasad. The meeting is being viewed as the first step towards firming up the agenda for the 10th ministerial meet, the highest decision-making body in WTO, to be held in Nairobi, Kenya, from December 15 to 18.

The Narendra Modi-led government has been pushing for a long time to move beyond the Bali deal and bring back the main agenda back, the negotiations for which started in 2001 in Doha.

Of late, India has been pushing for bringing the issue of developed countries’ trade distorting farm support. According to sources, India has decided it will not allow cherry-picking of issues and go for smaller packages like the Bali deal.

The developed countries, most of whom are engaged in a wide-ranging plurilateral trade deal like the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement being negotiated outside the WTO, are clandestinely trying to change the contours of the Doha mandate and bring in fresh package.

“India should be careful that the developed countries might scuttle the Doha package altogether and bring in a fresh mandate. We should not be seen as slowly giving in to this game played by the developed countries. And in the fresh mandate, the entire focus will be on market access with no commitment to cut rich countries’ farm subsidies. Then multilateralism will be in serious trouble. We need to wreck up the whole trade-distorting subsidies issue,” said Biswajit Dhar, Professor of Economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

According to sources, commerce minister Nirmala Sitharaman had strongly raised the issue of trade-distorting farm support during the informal WTO meeting of ministers on the sidelines of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development meeting in Paris earlier this month.

The Doha Declaration, adopted in 2001, has stated an ambitious programme for addressing the major distortions of world trade, especially agricultural markets. The need to find a politically acceptable deal for domestic stakeholders has led negotiators to soften the disciplines by introducing flexibilities that have eroded the appetite to conclude the round quickly,” said a report by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development.