India to hold WTO ministerial meeting on May 13-14

India will hold a ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) starting May 13 in New Delhi, government sources said on Friday.

The two-day meeting comes at a time when the multilateral rule-based-trading system is facing grave challenges. The move is aimed at providing an opportunity to the ministers to discuss various issues and the way forward.

Ministers and representatives from sixteen developing countries, including China, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Turkey, and six least developed countries will participate in the meeting to share common concerns on various issues affecting the WTO.

In the recent past, there have been increasing unilateral measures and counter-measures by members, deadlock in key areas of negotiations, and impasse in the Appellate Body, which threaten the very existence of Dispute Settlement Mechanism of the WTO and impacts the position of the organisation as an effective multilateral organisation. The current situation has given rise to demands from various quarters to reform the WTO.

The deliberations will aim at getting a direction on how to constructively engage on various issues in the WTO, both institutional and negotiating, in the run-up to the Twelfth Ministerial Conference of the WTO to be held in Kazakhstan in June 2020.

Ministers from Bangladesh, CAR and South Africa have confirmed their participation. Vice Ministers, senior officials and ambassadors will be representing other countries.