BBC Monitoring International Reports | September 14, 2003
Cancun, Mexico, 14 September: India, along with Brazil, on Sunday (14 September) spearheaded the developing countries' battle at the WTO, attacking the draft document that was seen by them as one-sided in favour of the EU and US and ignoring their interests.
Without mincing words, Indian Commerce Minister Arun Jaitley expressed disappointment that the revised draft "arbitrarily disregarded views and concerns" of developing countries and warned that the text did not lend itself to any meaningful dialogue.
"We still believe that this conference must be brought to a successful conclusion. We hope that circumstances and environment will be created to enable us to participate constructively," Jaitley told the meeting of heads of delegation to discuss the draft that has given very little to developing countries on contentious issue of agriculture as favoured by the EU and unbundled Singapore issue as advocated by US.
Speaking immediately after Brazil, which spoke on behalf of G21 regarding developing countries' concerns on agriculture, he said: "We are disappointed that the draft text ignores several concerns expressed by us and many developing countries."
"I note that the pretence of development dimensions of the Doha Agenda has finally been discarded confirming the apprehension expressed by me at the plenary session that this is mere rhetoric," Jaitley said to the huge applause from the developing countries' trade ministers.
On agriculture, he said, not only are the distortions prevalent today being perpetrated, but a slew of new measures to increase such distortions were being proposed in the draft, he said.
Asserting that export subsidies were not only allowed to continue but are sought to be increased through a new parallelism process, Jaitley said: "We believe we are compounding the distortions of the Uruguay round by adding some more to them." "The heightened ambition on market access pillar ironically provides special and differential treatment in favour of developed countries instead of developing countries", he said, adding, this was "utterly" incomprehensible and extremely insensitive to the large number of people living in poverty in developing countries. "How can we expect developing countries to reduce tariffs on a number of items to between 0 and 5 per cent as provided in the draft when the distortions against which such tariffs were supposed to compensate are sought to be enhanced," he asked.
On the proposal to unbundle four Singapore issues, Jaitley said the majority of the 146-member nations in the WTO have rejected launch of negotiations on these four issues and sought continuation of clarification process. Ignoring this, the draft has proposed launch of negotiations in trade facilitation and transparency in government procurement, he said, adding, on investment rules the negotiations are proposed to commence on the basis of general council decision on a date corresponding to finalization of modalities in agriculture and non-agricultural products market access.
The text on competition policy, the fourth Singapore issue, refers to possible negotiations, an obvious attempt to accommodate the interest of some developed countries, he said adding there is no reference to further explicit consensus either in the paragraphs on investment or competition policy.
Stressing that there was no explicit consensus at present on any of the issues, Jaitley said it would appear that the views expressed by a large number of developing and least developed countries on the need for further clarification of issues through a ministerial conference document and through a letter addressed to the facilitator by Malaysia and India on behalf of G-16 developing countries have been completely ignored. "This is yet another instance of the deliberate neglect of the views of a large number of developing countries," he said, adding, it represents an attempt made to thrust the views of a few countries on many developing nations.
On non-agricultural products market access, Jaitley said India wanted a specific reference to the chairman's formula for further work. On sectoral initiatives, "we believe that the participation had to be voluntary".
The present text was in fact an attempt to make the sectoral initiative mandatory. To reflect less than full reciprocity in reduction commitments, the end-tariff for developing countries in the sectoral initiatives must be higher than that of the developed countries, he said.
Source: PTI news agency, New Delhi, in English 0502 gmt 14 Sep 03BBC Monitoring International Reports:
