Praises, brickbats across WTO table

Perturbed BJP to go into the fine print

The Bharatiya Janata Party today has announced the setting up of a three-member committee to go into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) framework agreement. The committee will comprise former Commerce Minister Arun Jaitley, who represented India at the Cancun negotiations, former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha and Former Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie.

Party spokesperson Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the committee would be submitting its report within a week. Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley said the framework WTO agreement was "disturbing" in that it left very little bargaining space for developing countries like India. Jaitley made these remarks shortly before leaving for Orissa.

"My first reading of the draft has disturbed me, both on content as also on India's negotiating strategy," said Jaitley. Conceding to the strengthening of blue box, no discipline on green box and agreeing to drop three Singapore issues (investment, competition and the government procurement) and begin negotiations on one issue (trade facilitation) leaves India with little bargaining options, when tariffs are negotiated, said Jaitley.

Green box pertains to subsidies which are permissible and are not targeted at products and includes direct income support for farmers that is not related to production levels or prices. Blue box includes those subsidies given to farmers to limit production.

"We have agreed to a principle, a formula for agriculture tariff reduction as per which those countries with higher tariff will have to make maximum reductions. This obviously means that India which has high farm tariffs will have to reduce more than the developed nations," he said.

"India has made firm commitment about strengthening of blue box in agriculture and about negotiations on one of the four Singapore issues, trade facilitation and delinked our own interest on market access in agriculture, where tariff rates are to be negotiated on a future date," he added.

The BJP's sister organisation, the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), which was critical of the "feel good", "India shining" outlook of the BJP has also said the information filtering from Geneva is contradictory to what Kamal Nath has been claiming.

Swadeshi Jagran Manch chief Muralidhar Rao said his organisation would also be looking into the framework agreement. "The information from Geneva is contrary to what the government is claiming, we need to go into it in depth," he said.

"In any case, the framework of negotiations is such that developing countries such as India always lose out, however favourable the agreement looks," he said.