WTO talks resume in Geneva today

Negotiators from the World Trade Organization (WTO) member countries will meet in Geneva tomorrow to kickstart trade talks that broke down 14 months ago and will focus on specifics like farm and industrial products.

India’s negotiating team, headed by Additional Secretary in the Commerce Minister D K Mittal, has already reached the WTO headquarters, where it would be assisted by the country’s permanent mission there.

An informal ministerial held here earlier this month helped break the ice on the talks.

For about two weeks, the officials would deliberate mainly on the issues of opening global trade in agriculture and industrial products (Non-agriculture Market Access or Nama).

“They will make efforts to resolve the issues of livelihood security of poor farmers and the flexibility for the developing countries in Nama,” an official said.

It was mainly on these two contentious issues that the July 2008 talks in Geneva collapsed, when India insisted on seeking adequate protection for its farmers against import surges, while the US was not willing to give much.

The negotiations then remained in limbo and it was at India’s initiative that about 30 trade ministers met here during the September 3-4 period and agreed on resumption of talks.

India, to some extent, was blamed as a “fall guy” for the collapse of ministerial talks, when the then Commerce and industry Minister Kamal Nath held his ground against immense pressure from the developed world.

The ministers agreed to send their chief negotiators back to Geneva for, in the words of WTO Director General Pascal Lamy, “the real engagements”.

It was only in this month that the Obama administration appointed the US permanent WTO representative Michael Punk, who would be the main interlocutor for the Indian team.

A study by Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics has said that with the opening of the global trade through the Doha agreement, the world economy may get a booster dose of $300-700 billion a year. The Doha negotiations, which were launched in the Qatari capital in 2001, were to complete by the end of 2004.