G-4 ministers to discuss Doha deadlock

Aiming for a breakthrough in the Doha Round of negotiations, trade ministers of the G-4 group of countries (India, the United States, Brazil and the European Union) will meet in Delhi on April 12. This will be the first formal meeting of the G-4 countries after seven months. Talks resumed in February this year after July 2006, when the Doha Round of negotiations were suspended.

The meeting of the G-4 countries will be followed by a meeting to be attended by Japan and Australia.

The meeting is significant because after the resumption of the Doha Round negotiations in February, there has hardly been any significant offers from the WTO member countries. In the mean time, the Trade Promotion Authority, through which the US administration negotiates trade deals, is set to expire in June 2007. Once that happens, it will be very difficult for the US to negotiate in the Doha Round of talks for a multilateral trade framework.

Experts believe that it would be very difficult to achieve a breakthrough by the end of June. "I am sceptical of any significant movement in the talks by June. As of now, there are a range of offers on the table. The meeting of the G-4 countries is an attempt to break the ice," said Biswajit Dhar, head of Centre for WTO Studies at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade. "It remains to be seen if any decision arrived at by the G-4 countries will be acceptable to other WTO members".

Developing countries like India see the stance adopted by the US on its domestic agricultural subsidies as one of the major stumbling blocks. The subsidies, currently at around $18 billion, given by the US to its agriculture sector lends a competitive edge to its farm products. It has maintained that in a multilateral trade framework, such subsidies endanger the livelihood security of marginal farmers who form a bulk of their population.