India brought flexibility to WTO negotiation, says official

India has been able to bring about flexibility in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations to a large extent by ensuring that there are no `a priori' exclusions in the agreement, said Agneshwar Sen, officer on special duty (GATT), of the Union ministry of commerce and industry.

Speaking at a session on `The Doha Development Agenda and July 2004 Framework: What is its Impact?', organised on Monday in Ahmedabad by the state government and CII Gujarat Council, Sen stated that all attempts are being made to ensure that at least sensitive products do not suffer under the WTO regime.

"We have been able to bring in flexibility in three categories. First, we have ensured no reduction in tariffs for certain products, while in others we have through negotiations, kept the tariff reduction below the actual tariff reduction. In the third category, we have succeeded in keeping unbound tariffs at levels that will suit Indian industry, especially certain sensitive products," said Sen.

The modalities for the WTO framework will be complete by 2005.

He said that in some cases, it will be more useful for two countries to bilaterally sort out issues for the mutual benefit. Citing an example, he said that there are about 40 marine products processing industries in India and several countries are using them for processing marine products.

Participants also raised the issue of agriculture products, stating that in a country like India, there are different taxes in various states that produce the same agricultural products, and the government needs to standardise this even as it is going in for uniform tariffs at a world level.

Sen stated that throughout the negotiations on WTO, India has been fighting to keep the small scale industry (SSI) sector as a sensitive issue and this has been raised at all major meetings of member countries.