Kurien wants Amrita in WTO team

Leaving aside all the differences in true spirit of cooperatives, grand oldman of the dairy industry V Kurien, chairman of GCMMF, today suggested that Amrita Patel, chairman of NDDB, should be included as negotiator in the WTO meet.

At the stakeholder consultation workshop on 'Post- Hong Kong ministerial consultation on dairy products' held at IRMA on Thrusday, Kurien suggested, "You should include NDDB chairman Amrita Patel in the negotiation team who can talk on behalf of farmers."

Also present in the meet were Abhijit Das, senior trade officer, UNCTAD India Programme, L K Vaswani, acting director of IRMA, Vijay Paul Sharma, chairman of Centre for Management in Agriculture, IIM-A and other members of dairy industry.

After a detailed discussion over the post Hong Kong ministerial consultation on dairy products, one of the member of dairy industry suggested that the negotiators representing Indian Dairy at WTO talks lacks in-depth knowledge of the industry.

Upon this, Das said that the joint secretary from their organization should participate in the meet.

Kurien suggested that they should include a person who has sound knowledge of the dairy industry.

The differences between Kurien and Amrita Patel have often surfaced during skirmishes taken place between NDDB and Amul during the last one year.

Both have alledged and counter alledged each other several times at various occassions.

However, for the first time giving signal of some peace between the two sides today Kurien requested government to consider Amrita Patel for team negotiating dairy and agro -products at next WTO meet.

In the seminar, Kurien also said that the WTO agreement on agriculture, applicable to dairy sector, attempts to regulate the international trade by attempting to remove various forms of trade distortions "� including domestic support, restrictions on market access and export subsidies.

"Another concern which a country like India need to address is that of quality which mean adoption of international standards to ensure that the milk products produced in the country are safe. At the same time we need to resist imposition of unreasonable quality standards by developed countries with no adverse impact on consumer health or food safety," said Kurien.

He further added that India need to produce scientific evidences to overcome non-tariff barriers that are likely to be imposed by the developed countries to protect their market from competitive imports.