India surrendered lot of issues at WTO Bali talks: Yashwant

BJP leader Yashwant Sinha today said that in an attempt to safeguard the Food Security Act, India surrendered a lot of issues at the WTO talks in Bali last year and assured that NDA government will take a strong stand on the matter if it comes to power.
"At that time also we said that we are not satisfied with the Bali resolution, we feel that we surrendered a lot of things so that our Food Security Bill remains safe," the Former Finance Minister said, addressing a conference here.
Sinha said that those compromises were not needed. "I don't think we needed to do this kind of compromise."

He further added, "The agreement was not permanent and it will be reviewed after two years, in that review we will strongly put forward India's view."
In December 2013, the WTO adopted the historic Bali package which addresses several concerns of developing countries including India with regard to food security and trade facilitation.
Attacking UPA government, Sinha added that in the last ten years this government has done nothing at all by way of expenditure reforms that needs to be revived.

He added that during his tenure as the Finance Minister he had appointed a commission called the Expenditure Reforms Commission, headed by a former secretary to the government.

Sinha today posed 18 questions to Finance Minister P Chidambaram including on price rise, economic growth and job fronts.
He claimed that the high economic growth rate witnessed in the first four years of UPA-I (2004-2007) was largely on account of measures initiated by the NDA government and not because of any steps taken by UPA governments.