India To Participate In Wto Investment Panel Meet In June

India will participate in the first meeting of the World Trade Organisations working party on investment in June. The body was instituted in Geneva recently.

Sources said a chairman of the working party which would study the relationship between investment and trade had been appointed from Thailand.

The decision to set up the working party was taken at the Singapore Ministerial Conference of the WTO in December 1996. The formation of the committee was delayed, as a neutral chairman could not be found.

A chairman has yet to be appointed for the working party on competition policy. However, sources said the search could end soon, since the two parties would draw on each others work.

 

Several countries, including India, had been opposing the formation of the working party on investment. However, it was pointed out by the developed countries that the provisions of the Trade Related Investment Measures (TRIMs) agreement allowed a review of whether further measures were needed in this area.

The working party is expected to submit its report to the General Council and also present it at the next ministerial meeting of the WTO.

Commerce ministry sources said: In view of the existing WTO provisions on matters related to investment and competition policy and the built-in agenda in these areas including under the agreement on TRIMs and on the understanding that the work undertaken will not prejudge whether negotiations will be initiated in the future, the Singapore Ministerial Conference agreed to establish a working group to study issues related to the interaction between trade and competition policy including anti-competitive practices in order to identify any areas that may merit further consideration in the WTO framework.

It was also decided that the two groups one on investment and the other on competition policy would draw on each others work, if necessary, and also upon the work done in this area under the United Nations Conference on Trade & Development and other appropriate inter-government forums.

The ministerial conference agreed that in the conduct of the working groups, cooperation of these organisations could be sought to make the best use of available resources and to ensure that the development dimension was taken fully into account.

It was also decided that future negotiations regarding multilateral disciplines in these areas would take place only after a consensus had been evolved among the WTO members in respect of such negotiations.

The World Trade Organisa-tion was formally created at the end of the 1986-93

Uruguay Round of international trade negotiations. Launched on January 1, 1995, it replaced the old General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Gatt), which had acted as an interim world trade watchdog since 1948.