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Shri Kamal Nath, Union Minister of Commerce & Industry, today called for removal of non-tariff barriers (NTBs) to trade and said that in view of the vulnerability of developing countries to NTBs, standards and conditionalities applied to exports of developing countries should be reasonable, transparent and fair. Addressing the National Conference on “Non-Tariff Barriers for Indian Exports: Critical Inputs for the WTO Negotiations” organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in association of Ministry of Commerce & Industry, here this evening, Shri Kamal Nath said: “I am not advocating complete abandonment of standards and conditions. These are necessary. Even India uses them. All I am saying is that these be transparently and openly arrived at and fairly and justly implemented”.
Stating that with the steady increase in tariffs the world over, NTBs had become the chief instrument of regulating trade, he observed that developed countries used sophisticated methods while less developed countries had more straightforward NTBs but the common objective of all these was to limit imports. “A certain level of conditionalities, particularly when they relate to public health and consumer choice, is certainly tolerable. What is intolerable is when these measures place unreasonable demands on traders which they cannot meet, or when they drive up costs of products with the specific aim to make them uncompetitive in the importing markets”, he said.
Apart from sanitary and phyto-sanitary (SPS) requirements, there were a host of other NTBs, the Minister said, such as standards, testing, destruction of allegedly contaminated or damaged consignments and other more innovative forms of NTBs. “In US Ports, for example, the Customs authorities have begun demanding that Indian shrimp exporters provide Bank guarantees against the possible imposition of anti-dumping duties. This is preposterous! Even if there is no anti-dumping duty yet imposed, the poor exporter has to bear the added cost of providing a Bank guarantee against even the possibility of an anti-dumping duty! This makes his product more expensive”, Shri Kamal Nath said. He also referred to issues of labelling and registration as well as barriers imposed in the guise of environmental management system and social accountability. Further, NTBs were imposed not only by government, but even by importing firms.
Shri Kamal Nath urged participants to give him feedback on NTBs faced by Indian products in other countries and also sought improved feedback from them “on our own NTB regime”. “On the domestic front, I believe that NTBs can be a legitimate tool in ensuring that industry at home is on the same footing as a foreign supplier. There is a view that these are critical tools for stimulating development especially for countries like India. We need to identify a list of sensitive products which are employment intensive, cater to vulnerable sections of our populations, have thriving domestic presence and contribute significantly to the country’s economic growth. In these sectors we will have to review what conditionalities we have imposed apart from tariffs, and if these conditions are inadequate then we should consider appropriate measures. Of course, everything we do should be WTO-compatible and meet the test of scrutiny from every angle”, he said.
The Conference was organised to: (a) apprise business and industries on the status of the WTO negotiations in agriculture and non-agricultural products as well as their implications for different business sectors in India; and (b) to discuss specific NTB issues being faced by business and industry and suggest effective solutions.
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