Food security focus of WTO agenda

The government will fully protect food security and livelihood concerns of the farmers at the multilateral negotiations, Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath said on Thursday.

"The cabinet has given me a mandate for negotiations to ensure that interests of the farmers, food security angle and the our social issue would be fully kept guarded against any efforts to provide market access into India which impinge upon our agricultural interest," Kamal Nath told reporters after a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on WTO here.

The cabinet approved India's negotiating strategy on WTO issues for the multilateral negotiations. A meeting of the newly constituted committee on WTO was necessiated due to a meeting of the G-20 and the core group of G-20 (NG-5) on the sidelines of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD XI) being held in Sao Paulo from June 13.

These meetings are the first multilateral discussions since the failure of WTO talks at Cancun in September last year. Commerce and Industry minister Kamal Nath is leading high level delegation for the meeting.

Kamal Nath said agriculture would be on top of the agenda in the meetings of the G-20 and the NG-5 which consists of United States, European Union, China, Australia and India.

"We will discuss the criteria which shall set up the principles for negotiating the framework in the WTO which will be finalised next month in Geneva", he said. WTO member countries are trying to finalise the draft framwork for negotiations on agriculture by July-end.

Asked to elaborate on the mechanisms which would be used to protect the interests of the farmers, Kamal Nath said there are three mechanisms namely the special product mechanism, the special protection mechanism and the Tariff Rate Quotas (TRQs) .

Emphasising that there was no question of quid-pro-quo, Kamal Nath said that while there were around a 100 items which were not produced here the primary concern is to protect items where the Indian farmer is affected.

"Our farmers cannot compete with the farmers in developed countries like New Zealand. We want to ensure that their production is not affected and that they get better remmunerative prices for their crops." On singapore issues, he said india was in favour of trade facilitation and transparency in procedures.