Govt pulled up for 'Nairobi surrender'

Experts say India could have done more at WTO ministerial

Some experts on Monday flayed the government's performance at the World Trade Organization (WTO)'s recently concluded Nairobi ministerial, describing it as a debacle that would have significant impact on agriculture, trade and future negotiations.

India's failure to exercise legal options not only resulted in the Doha development agenda being effectively killed but also resulted in the country losing out on its demands for a permanent solution to public stockholding of food or special safeguards in agriculture, experts from various fields said.

"Talks at Nairobi collapsing would have been better than the economies of underdeveloped countries collapsing," said Afsar Jafri, coordinator for a policy group, Focus on the Global South. Referring to the Nairobi ministerial declaration, Jafri said interests of developing countries had been rolled over yet again.

While agreeing to continue deliberations on the Doha agenda along established lines, the declaration indicated that not everyone was willing to do so. "Other members do not reaffirm the Doha mandates, as they believe approaches are necessary to achieve meaningful outcomes in multilateral negotiations," the draft said, pointing to developed countries led by the US, which had called for diluting the Doha agenda or abandoning it altogether.

"The lack of consensus among WTO members effectively ends the Doha agenda," said Dinesh Abrol, convenor of the national working group on patent laws. He argued the government had failed to exercise its right by agreeing to a ministerial declaration that it could have abstained from. WTO procedures require any new resolution to garner unanimous support of all member countries before being adopted.

Adopted in 2001, the Doha agenda had initially proposed trade concessions in the form of reduced tariffs and market access to developing and least developed countries.

"India's inability to broker a deal on a permanent solution to public stockholding of food or special safeguards in agriculture will have significant effects sooner than later," said Ranja Sengupta from a non-profit development organisation, Third World Network.

Public food stockholding, one of the principal objectives of the government at the ministerial, has only been assured of further negotiations with no specific deadline.

Sengupta added the proposal to link the special safeguards mechanism in agriculture to greater market access was dangerous. The mechanism allows countries to temporarily raise tariffs to deal with surging imports and subsequent price falls.

While the WTO has recognised members' rights to take recourse to safeguards, the developing bloc's demand of speedy creation of the special safeguards mechanism along the lines of the special agricultural safeguards enjoyed by rich countries has not been addressed.

One of the more concrete agreements at Nairobi, the reduction of export subsidies, also does not help India. "Completely eliminating export subsidies by 2023 will further aggravate the crisis in the sugar industry," said Biswajit Dhar, professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He added while developed countries had committed to reductions they were silent on the more trade-distorting issue of domestic subsidies.

Estimates suggest developed countries subsidise 70-80 per cent of the production cost of agriculture. While they continue to discuss the issue, India has been repeatedly targeted for its minimum support price programme for food crops.