Agriculture key to WTO talks, maintains India

India today said agriculture was central to any deal at the World Trade Organisation and developed countries must deliver 'real' cuts in farm subsidies for any movement in trade talks.

"Agriculture is central to trade talks.... The developed countries must deliver real cuts. As long as box shifting (shifting subsidies from one category to another) continues the situation will not improve, no matter what developed countries say about reducing subsidies," Commerce Secretary S N Menon said at a seminar organised by Assocham. Menon said negotiations in other areas will not make any headway unless there was convergence on agriculture.

With two weeks left for the WTO ministerial in Hong Kong, he said no one wanted the meeting to fail like Cancun two years ago. "It (failure) would be terrible for multilateral trade. It would be bad for the WTO as an institution and also for developing countries like India, which want inequities in global trade to be addressed. But with divergence remaining, the idea is to reduce expectations without reducing ambition from the ministerial," Menon said.

The commerce secretary said the draft ministerial text, expected by tomorrow, will be discussed at the WTO trade negotiating committee meeting on November 30 and the General Council on December 1 and 2. Menon said there was a need to put the focus back on development concerns rather than on market access issues in the Doha round.

Developing countries were concerned that the original development agenda was going adrift, he said, adding that

India remained committed to securing full modalities for a successful outcome at the Hong Kong meet while ensuring that development issues were not relegated to post-ministerial talks.

The issue of special products (where members need not make any tariff cuts) and special safeguard mechanism (to protect domestic manufacturers in case of surge in imports) were also critical for food security, livelihood security and rural development in developing countries, he said.

Menon stressed that tariff cuts in industrial goods must be on the principle of less than full reciprocity whereby developed nations maker higher reductions.

"Co-efficients do not matter. What matters is actual reductions," he said. Tariff peaks as well tariff escalations also needed to be flattened out, he said, adding there was no convergence on this so far.

On services, he said talks have been progressing very slowly partly because of the nature of request-offer approach being followed in the WTO.

"We are ready to move forward in an ambitious way in services if developed countries give ambitious offers in mode 1 (relating to cross-border supply of services such as outsourcing) and mode 4 (movement of professionals)," he said.