Two months before the ministerial meet in Bali, Indonesia, Director General (DG) of World Trade Organization (WTO) Roberto Azevêdo is visiting Delhi today to meet senior government officials and captains of Indian industry to understand the country's stance during the upcoming negotiations.
During December 3-6 trade ministers from all the 159-member nations are expected to instill a fresh lease of life into the stalled talks for a global trade deal, the negotiations for which started in November 2001 in Doha, Qatar.
Azevêdo, who arrived in India on Sunday, is going to meet business chambers such as CII and FICCI. Ever since he assumed the DG's role from his predecessor Pascal Lamy, he has been urging countries to speed up work and find out a mechanism to keep WTO's relevance sustainable.
This time, which is going to be the ninth ministerial meeting, it is expected that some sort of an agreement on trade facilitation is going to be agreed and signed between the countries. If this happens, it will be seen as the first major victory for WTO, which is reeling under severe criticisms of losing relevance in a dynamic world that is increasingly resorting to regional and bilateral trading arrangements.
The Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), which seeks to reduce red tape and transaction costs for exporters, is something that industries across the country are eagerly waiting for.
"Trade facilitation is a goal that is well worth pursuing and we all agree that it can make a significant contribution to increasing the efficiency of trade. However, what we are negotiating is a multilateral agreement with very different implications for different members and a standalone agreement on Trade Facilitation will not serve the interests of the general membership. This has become abundantly clear over the weeks and months of discussion on the subject in Geneva," said an industry representative.
Ever since talks got stalled last in Geneva in 2008, India had been pushing for a consensus on food security based on the proposal of G-33 coalition of developing countries.
Developing countries are finding themselves hamstrung by the existing rules in running their food stockholding and domestic food aid programmes. The developed world too had market price support programmes and was able to move away from market price support - though not fully even now - because of their deep pockets. This is not possible for developing countries. It is important for developing countries to be able to guarantee some minimum returns to their poor farmers so that they are able to produce enough for themselves and for domestic food security, the representative said.
