 "WTO trade talks panel meets on Thursday")
The TNC will now be held just before the General Council (GC) meets once again, after it got suspended in July. The GC, highest decision making body at WTO, is expected to take place at Geneva on October 21.
The mandate for commencing negotiations for TFA, as part of the larger Doha Development Agenda, was decided in 2004. It was only last year when members agreed to sign the agreement during the ministerial meeting in Bali, Indonesia, last December. However, the deal could not be signed by a deadline of July 31 this year, after India also demanded concessions on stockpiling of foodgrain.
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It seems the government is going to reiterate its stance at the TNC meeting. There is increased pressure from countries, especially developed nations, to give up its demand for a permanent solution on food stocks. If TFA goes through, that will result in relaxing global customs norms across all 160 member-countries.
"My hope is that we will be able to implement the Bali decisions - and that, therefore, we will be able to resume our broader negotiating agenda. Together with the members, we are working to make sure this is the case. But if no solution is found, members must ask themselves some tough questions, about how they see the future of the Bali package and the post-Bali agenda. And, what this means for the WTO's negotiating function," Director-General Roberto Azevedo had said in Toronto this week. He urged the current impasse be resolved, if the relevance of WTO as an institution to set global trading rules was to not suffer a setback. US ambassador to WTO, Michael Punke, has said if India and a few others go back on their earlier promise to sign the TFA, it will signal collapse of the Bali package.