Mr. Kamal Nath,
Minister of Commerce and Industry said today that the talks among
the G-4 Ministers broke down in Potsdam (Germany) on 21 June, 2007
because of the failure of the developed countries to accept
effective reductions in their agricultural subsidies and at the same
time, seeking additional market access in the developing countries
for their agricultural products, including for their highly
subsidized ones. “Agreeing to this would have not only been against
the mandate of the Doha Development Round, it would have seriously
jeopardized the livelihoods of the farmers of the developing and
least developed countries and threatened the food security of many
poorer nations”, Mr. Kamal Nath said, emphasising that there was no
question of any compromise on agricultural market access issues
which would have affected our farmers.
The Trade Ministers
of G-4 (India, Brazil, the EC and the US) met in Potsdam 19-21 June
2007. This was the second meeting of the G-4 Trade Ministers since
April 2007, when they had charted out a road map in New Delhi for
meetings among themselves to engage intensively on all the important
issues relating to the stalled Doha Round negotiations of the World
Trade Organisation (WTO). The Ministers had resolved then to try to
seek convergence on as many issues as possible by the third week of
June, so as to facilitate a consensus in the larger multilateral
process in the WTO.
On the issue of
market access in non-agricultural products or industrial tariffs,
the developed countries had proposed Swiss coefficients of 10 and 15
for themselves and developing countries respectively, which would
have led to the former taking average tariff cuts in their
industrial products of just over 30%,
while the developing countries would have had to reduce their
tariffs by more than 60% on an average. This could only have helped
the developed countries to make heavy inroads into the markets of
developing countries while offering negligible reciprocal gains to
the latter. It also held out the specter of deindustrialization of
the developing countries along with a reduction of foreign direct
investment flows into them. This was totally unacceptable to the
developing countries, as it would have led to increasing
unemployment among their workforce.
The developed
countries also expressed reluctance in allowing the reform of the
current regime of trade defence measures including anti-dumping and
countervailing duties, which have often been used unfairly by them
against the developing countries, in order to curb their export
growth. The other major issue was the unwillingness of the developed
countries to accept the discipline of the International Convention
on Bio-Diversity in the arena of patents and trademarks so as to
allow untrammeled exploitation of traditional knowledge and natural
genetic resources, without prior consent or benefit sharing with the
community.
While expressing his
disappointment at the failure of the G-4 talks, Mr. Kamal Nath
stated that the Doha Round had been announced as a Development Round
and had raised the expectations of the developing world that it
would help them tackle their problems of unemployment and poverty
through increased trade opportunities. However, the current
aspirations of many of the developed countries were totally
oblivious to the development content of the Round and were instead
focused mainly on seeking greater market access for their own
products. The Minister expressed hope that India, which was a firm
believer in a rule based, fair and transparent multilateral system
of trade, would work with other like minded countries-both
developing as well as developed, to bring about a successful
conclusion of the Doha Round, which was truly reflective of the
development objectives of the Round.
It may be recalled
that prior to the Potsdam meeting, Mr. Kamal Nath had participated
in the meetings of the G-20, G-33 and NAMA-11 Ministers in Geneva on
11th June 2007.
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