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Developing nations score point at WTO
K. R. Sudhaman

Cancun (Mexico), September 11
As trade negotiators from 146 countries got down to tough negotiations in key problem areas, developing countries, including India, scored a major point when their draft proposals on the contentious agricultural issues were agreed to be taken up for discussion by the WTO conference.

After some violent beginning to the conference in which a South Korean farmer stabbed himself to death, ministers and officials settled down to discussions on how to bridge the gap between the rich and the developing nations on agriculture and trade issues.

The Chairman of the WTO Ministerial meeting and host Mexican Foreign Minister Louis Ernesto Derbez agreed to look into all proposals on agriculture, including those of G-21 countries, before formulating the final draft.

Spearheading the developing nations charge, Indian Commerce Minister Arun Jaitley made a forceful plea for correcting distortions in agriculture in the rich nations, saying that the plight of poor farmers was directly linked to subsidies given to farmers in industrialised nations.

In an apparent attack on the EU and the USA trying to thrust their agenda, Mr Jaitley favoured the development dimension to take centre stage in the negotiations. He demanded that the conference move towards a more “inclusive and transparent” decision making process.

The EU and the USA had come together before the start of the conference to provide a pro-developed framework into the conference draft which was opposed by developing countries, including India. The G-21 thus gave an alternative and counter-draft.

Both EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy and US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick had contended that the conference draft would form the basis for the agriculture negotiations.

Apart from the G-21 proposal, a group of 23 developing countries led by Indonesia submitted a proposal on new strategic products and a special safeguard mechanism on agriculture.

Mr Jaitley told reporters that though the G-21 framework was skeletal, its approach was different from the EU-US proposal.

The final conference draft must reflect the G-21 position with regard to elimination of domestic support and export subsidies in agriculture as it was being considered as a “fair position”.

The newly formed group of 21 includes Brazil, China, India, South Africa and Argentina and claims to represent 63 per cent of the world’s farmers.

In his statement to the conference, Mr Jaitley pointed out that the protection to agriculture in developed countries was four to seven times more than that for manufactured goods.

This stimulated over-production in high cost rich countries, shutting out potentially more competitive products from developing countries.

“It is no surprise that over the past few years, agricultural exports from developing countries to developed countries grew at just half the rate they did to other developing countries”, he said. — PTI