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Livelihood,
Food Security Concerns Not Negotiable
Standing firm on India's agricultural
interests on day two of the World
Trade
Organisation (WTO) Mini-Ministerial Meeting in
Geneva, Shri Kamal Nath, Minister of Commerce and
Industry, made it clear that livelihood and food
security interests of millions of India's
subsistence farmers were not negotiable. "I can
negotiate commerce, but not subsistence", he
reiterated at each of his interactions so far,
including the green room and trade negotiations
committee meetings on Friday as also at the G-6
meeting on Thursday, which was attended by the US,
EU, Brazil, Australia and Japan, besides India.
Hitting out at attempts to rewrite
the Hong Kong Declaration, the Framework Agreement
and the Doha Development Agenda itself, Shri Kamal
Nath reminded developed countries that “the Doha
Round is all about increasing trade flows from
developing countries to the developed countries,
about agricultural reform and about market access
for agricultural products, not of subsidies. The
mandate is essentially to accelerate the growth rate
of the economies of developing countries so as to
raise the living standards of the millions of the
world's poor living on the edge of subsistence and
not for salvaging economies of developed countries
(through continuance of subsidies that distort world
agricultural trade and other inequities". Reduction
in trade distorting agricultural subsidies is a
pre-condition for market access, he added.
(Agriculture is the most distorted sector of world
trade and 85% of domestic support or subsidy
payments in the world are made by the developed
countries. Developing countries do not have the
resources to make such payments to the farmers and
hence, these distortions come in the way of free and
fair trade in agricultural products as farmers in
developing countries are not able to compete with
the artificially low prices induced by such heavy
subsidies in overseas markets nor can they compete
with cheap imports).
Shri Kamal Nath urged all members to
bear in mind the para 24 of the Hong Kong
Declaration which stated that" it is important to
advance the development objectives of this Round
through enhanced market access for developing
countries in both Agriculture and NAMA" - i.e.,
non-agricultural market access or industrial
tariffs.
Later at a press conference of the
G-33 - a grouping of countries with defensive
interests in agriculture, he joined the other
ministers in demanding that the modalities for
negotiations for Special Products and Special
Safeguard Mechanism in agriculture must address
their food security, livelihood and development
needs. They said that 18 indicators for determining
Special Products had already been tabled by the
G-33. “The G-33 should not be expected to shoulder
the cost of achieving purely mercantilist goals of a
few at the expense of putting their own development
paths in peril", they stressed.
New Delhi,
Jul 1, 2006 |
