India To Push For Trade Consensus At Unctad Meet

The Unctad Global Investment Forum is expected to be attended by developing and developed countries. Among them are Bangladesh, Singapore, Nepal, Japan, Czech Republic, Norway, Canada and Madagascar. This debate takes place against the background of current negotiations at the OECD on a binding agreement on investment and a proposal that a possible international framework on FDI be discussed at the WTO conference in December.

The Unctad secretary general will be the chairperson for the session - Towards a multilateral framework on investment. Among the countries expected to speak at this session are Poland, Pakistan, Uganda, Ghana, China, India, EU, France, US, Switzerland and Malaysia.

 

There will be another session on Where do we go from here?. The WTO general council chairman, the president of the trade and development board of Unctad and the OECD negotiating group on multilateral investment agreement will also participate.

The discussions are meant to help governments prepare for the ministerial conference where issues related to linkages between trade and investment may figure prominently. It is pointed out that governments recognise the growing importance of foreign direct investment but their response to this policy challenge remains highly diverse, as reflected in the proliferation of bilateral, regional and multilateral instruments.