India was willing to accept the proposals on tariff reduction for industrial goods as a trade-off for protection of its interests in agriculture at the recently held Geneva meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
While Indian negotiators had some reservations that developing countries were being asked to do more than the developed nations, they were willing to accept the proposals as a basis provided India’s “concerns in other areas, especially agriculture were fully addressed”, a highly-placed source said.
Of the three options on the table, India was likely to agree for a coefficient of 22, which would have required it to reduce tariff on industrial products by about 60 per cent. Under this proposal, India would have been able to shield its products to the extent of 10 per cent.
