India calls upon G20 nations to ensure access to essential treatments, vaccines at affordable prices

India on Thursday called for an agreement among G20 nations to enable the use of flexibilities under a WTO pact on intellectual property rights to ensure access to essential medicines, treatments and vaccines at affordable prices.

In his interventions during the second G20 virtual trade and investment ministers meeting, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal asked the G20 members to first focus on immediate and concrete actions that can ease the distress being faced by people all over the world due to COVID-19 pandemic.

"He strongly called for agreement to enable the use of TRIPs (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights ) flexibilities to ensure access to essential medicines, treatments and vaccines at affordable prices," an official statement said.

The TRIPS agreement under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) deals with intellectual property rights including patents, copyrights, and industrial design.

The minister also called upon the nations to agree to provide diagnostic and protective equipment, and healthcare professionals across borders where they are most needed.

Goyal said that doing away with the policy instrument of export restrictions is not a panacea that will guarantee access to medical products and food for all.

"In fact, such a step is likely to lead to a flight of these critical products to the highest bidder, making them inaccessible to the resource-poor," he said.

A more effective and lasting way to ensure food security for the most vulnerable would be by agreeing to eliminate the historic asymmetries in the agreement on agriculture, and delivering on the long-standing WTO's ministerial mandate to establish permanent, adequate and accessible disciplines on public stockholding for food security purposes, Goyal said.

He added that when the pandemic broke out, India barely produced a few thousand pieces of Personal Protective Equipment as it was not needed in large numbers before.

"When we realised that countries were not able to supply enough for our needs, our domestic manufacturers created and ramped up capacities. So much so, that we now produce nearly 300,000 PPEs every day," he said