Solution To Farmers & #8217; Issues Needed: Ajit Singh

New agriculture minister Ajit Singh today said the international agreement on agriculture under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) had posed several problems for the local farmers which needed to be solved.

Besides getting the provisions of the accord modified to suit Indian interests, the local farmers needed to be shown the way to cope with the WTO stipulations, Singh told newspersons soon after taking charge of the ministry at Krishi Bhawan, here, today. He was sworn in as Cabinet minister yesterday.

He said the original accord was signed keeping merely the industry in mind. Though the industry also did not benefit much from it, in the agriculture sector, everybody disliked the WTO. One of the biggest problems concerning it was the skewed subsidy regime.

While the developed countries were paying huge agricultural subsidies, the developing nations could never think of matching such levels. The agriculture subsidies in the US in 1998 were more than the total value of the Indian agricultural produce. The export subsidies were apart from them, the minister said.

He said a lot of other developing countries were also feeling the way India did about the WTO.