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- By Parinda News Bureau, January 30, 2006, 09:49 IST
The manufacturing sector is the highest priority for India and while foreign direct investment (FDI) is welcome, it must be incremental in terms of creating jobs in the country especially in the rural and agro-based sectors, Shri Kamal Nath, Minister of Commerce and Industry, said at a breakfast meeting of the Global Agenda in Davos yesterday, in which the other participants were the Finance Minister Shri P. Chidambaram and the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Shri Montek Singh Ahluwalia. He described the recent decision on FDI in retail as only a limited opening and underlined the need, in the light of the experience in this regard in other Asian countries, to find a model which would be back-ended - e.g., FDI in setting up of cold chains and agro-processing, and not rock the boat of the country's existing small retailers.
The Minister indicated that FDI inflow into India was being targeted at US $ 10 billion in 2006-2007, while the inflows were likely to touch US $ 7.5 billion during this fiscal 2005-06.
Later, responding during a press conference to a query about the deliberations of the informal meeting of WTO trade ministers held on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Shri Kamal Nath indicated that the meeting attended by about 20 trade ministers agreed on a work programme listing out the timelines for 2006 in pursuance of the Hong Kong Declaration in different areas of negotiations including agriculture, non-agricultural market access and rules. The work programme envisages finalization of modalities in agricultural negotiations (including the modalities for elimination of export subsidies) and in non-agricultural market access (NAMA) negotiations by 30th April 2006. Shri Kamal Nath also said that the US and the European Union (EU) must move in the matter of reducing trade-distorting agricultural subsidies and the issue of tariff peaks and tariff escalations in areas of interest to developing countries in industrial tariff negotiations if the Doha round was to deliver as a truly development round. The argument of some developed countries that they must get greater market access in return for cutting agricultural subsidies was unacceptable as " we cannot be asked to pay a price for their stopping to do something they should not be doing in the first place", he said.
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