'UPA frittered away India's edge at WTO'

Little gain for big concessions: BJP

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) yesterday expressed concern on the World Trade Organisation (WTO) framework agreement agreed to by India at Geneva, saying the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had frittered away India's negotiating advantages and obtained little in return for the significant concession made by it.

The party had set up a three-member committee, comprising former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha, former Commerce Minister Arun Jaitley and former Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie, that came out with its report yesterday.

Jaitley, who spoke on behalf of the committee, said the country's negotiating strategy normally was that the subsidies, which developed nations gave themselves should be reduced and farmers from developing countries be protected.

"The developed countries subsidises its agricultural sector to the tune of $1billion a day. This distorts the agricultural market as production remains high and prices remain low, depressing the prices here as well," he said.

According to Jaitley, the party has expressed concern in relation to the fact that trade-distorting subsidies given by the developed countries in the "Blue box" have been expanded. The draft agreement opens up the possibility, of further expansion of the Box.

"The Geneva draft has conceded the principle for the first time that de minimus (minimal) subsidies given by even developing countries can be reduced unless almost all the subsidies are given to subsistence and resource poor farmers," said Jaitley.

"This could greatly impair India's ability to provide much needed support to a large section of our farming community," he added.

Additionally, Jaitley said, the draft now envisages that negotiations would also commence one of the "Singapore Issues" namely trade facilitation, which India has traditionally opposed.

"As against this, it would have been more appropriate negotiating strategy for India to defend its interests in agricultural protectionism while conceding to the expansion of the blue box, non-disciplining of the Green box, and accepting the principle of de minimus, "he said.

"The detailed option for reduction in the agricultural tariffs, the number of special products, the extent of tariff reduction in special products, would all be settled on a later date when admittedly our bargaining capacity could be lesser that it was when the issues of subsidy were being negotiated," added Jaitley.

He added that normally when issues like this are to be discussed in an international forum, the major political parties are taken into confidence.

"In fact there are post conference debriefing sessions," he added. He, however, added that the WTO negotiations were a matter of national concern and that the BJP was not going to take an adversarial position.

"We hope the government will take corrective measures to repair our negotiating strength," he said.