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Shri Kamal Nath, Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, today called for development audit of the ongoing World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations, as a first step towards developing an outline of the development package for the next Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong. Participating in the Session of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris on “Trade Negotiations under the Doha Development Round”, the Minister took the lead in activating the development agenda of the WTO negotiations, and urged members not to forget that Doha was supposed to be primarily a development round. Countering the impression often given that developing countries were not ambitious enough in the negotiations, Shri Kamal Nath said ambition in the WTO negotiations should be seen essentially in the context of ensuring better market access for products of export interest to developing countries and doing it in a manner that would not impair their capacity to develop in consonance with their own specific socio-economic needs. “ If ambition does not enhance development, then it is not ‘ambition’, but illusion”, he remarked. India is among the non-member countries invited to participate in the OECD meet.
Earlier, on Tuesday the 3rd May, Shri Kamal Nath participated in a series of key trade meetings and discussed important issues of the current WTO Round especially agriculture at interactions with the G-20, G-10 and with the FIPS group as negotiations enter a crucial phase in the preparatory phase on the road to the Hong Kong Ministerial slated for December 2005. The G-20 meeting was held to strategise on issues ahead of the WTO Mini-Ministerial particularly the issue of converting specific duties to ad valorem equivalents (AVEs) that has stalled the negotiations on agriculture so far. Developed countries are applying specific duties on a whole range tariff lines on products of export interst to developing countries, which are essentially equivalent to very high tariffs, thereby denying market access to developing countries, even as developing countries have bound their tariffs at ad valorem rates. Shri Kamal Nath underlined the urgent need for the developed countries to resolve this issue by binding their specific duties in ad valorem terms. “There is also the question of equity. We cannot have on the same products rates of duty in developed countries which are five or ten times the rates of tariff in developing countries”, he said. The G-20 was attended among others by Argentina, Brazil, China, Chile, India, Mexico, Pakistan and South Africa. Later, at the FIPS meeting attended by the European Union (EU), the US, Australia, Brazil and India – including Mr. Peter Mandelson, the EU trade Commissioner and the new United States Trade Representative (USTR) Mr. Rob Portman, Shri Kamal Nath reiterated the point, saying “ we consider binding of tariffs in ad valorem terms to be very important for the approximate draft by the deadline of July”.
At the meeting of G-10 – largely a group of developed countries which have defensive interests in Agriculture – Shri Kamal Nath discussed agriculture issues in detail and said that India could respect their sensibilities in Agriculture, if they respected India’s. “Agriculture is not about numbers, it is about people”, he stressed. He also told G-10 that India could cooperate with it on Agriculture, if they cooperated in non-agricultural market access (NAMA) and services. The G-10 meeting was coordinated by Japan and included Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Israel, Taiwan and Korea.
Shri Kamal Nath is scheduled to participate in the Mini Ministerial meeting later today, which will be chaired by the Trade Minister of Hong Kong China
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