The Hindu | By Our Special Correspondent
CHENNAI, JUNE 1. The Union Government is considering a proposal that members of the regional trade agreements (RTAs) should extend the MFN (most-favoured-nation) treatment to all members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) after a period of "graduation" of such agreements, according to Mr. Nripendra Misra, Special Secretary in the Commerce Ministry.
Participating in a seminar on the "impact of the WTO regime on Indian industry", organised by the Madras School of Economics (MSE) today, Mr. Misra pointed out that more than 60 per cent of world trade was accounted for by regional free trade/preferential trade agreements, whose members enjoyed concessions denied to other nations, representing a (WTO-permitted) departure from the MFN principle.
India itself was not a beneficiary of any regional agreement, while even the limited bilateral FTA reached with Sri Lanka had provoked protests from sections of industry like tea producers. The merits of the proposal for MFN treatment by members of the regional agreements would be considered (for support or opposition in the WTO) in the background of the extent of real benefits from FTAs, he said.
Declaring that India had a big stake in ensuring that the November 2001 Doha Ministerial Conference of the WTO did not end in a fiasco as happened in Seattle in 1999, Mr. Misra said what India was keen on was not the launch of a new round but time-bound negotiation of the Uruguay Round(UR)-mandated issues (viz, agriculture and trade in services), review of TRIPS, TRIMS, and discussion of UR implementation issues like special and differential treatment for developing countries.
Under no circumstances would issues like labour, environment and investment should be brought under the WTO negotiations, he said and warned that some provisions of TRIMS and the agreement on sanitary and phytosanitary measures would put the future of the WTO in jeopardy.
Mr. Misra regretted that despite the Union Government circulating to major trade bodies the WTO schedule of Trade Policy Reviews of member-countries in the next few years, so that they could supply the Government with facts on issues like non- tariff-barriers practised by the countries concerned, the response from the industry was poor. The Government had therefore entrusted to the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation the task of identifying issues to be dealt with during the country-wise reviews.
He criticised relying on negative approaches like erecting NTBs to imports or leaving things to be tackled at the costly dispute settlement mechanism of the WTO.
Those who were hostile to India's very membership of the multilateral WTO, Mr. Misra said, should study the high price that China was paying for re-entry into the organisation, the labour standards that the U.S. had successfully imposed in its bilateral agreements with Jordan, Cambodia and Vietnam, and the European Union linking concessions in its GSP (generalised system of preferences) to compliance with labour standards.
Dr Raja J. Chelliah, chairman, MSE, said India was not a "typical" developing country but one with substantial capabilities to achieve competitiveness. However, it was India's approach of protectionism and diffidence which allowed the developed countries to get away with an AoA (Agreement on Agriculture) weighted in their favour in the Uruguay Round, rather than one in favour of developing countries having comparative advantage and little subsidy in the farm sector.
Copyrights c 2001 The Hindu & indiaserver.com, Inc.The Hindu:
