D Ravi Kanth: Endgame, in many ways

TRADING THOUGHTS

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D Ravi Kanth Geneva
Last Updated : Jan 29 2013 | 12:59 AM IST

The proposals in the two texts on agriculture and industrial products will become the basis for further negotiations. If all goes well, Lamy wants to hold his much-planned ministerial meeting around June 23 to finalise what are called modalities or parameters. They would suggest the figures for tariff and subsidy cuts in agriculture and tariff cuts in industrial products for members barring the poorest ones.

But there is consternation all around, at least in the arena of market-opening for industrial products. Privately, many members acknowledged an evolutionary pattern in the agriculture proposals notwithstanding certain major omissions and commissions. Ironically, those on the industrial goods presented a pattern that looked somewhat like the travails of Muhammad bin Tughluq (1325-1351) when he forcibly moved the entire population of Delhi to the new capital of Daulatabad and then brought them back to Delhi after two years. It is well-known that the "brilliant" plan of Tughluq proved to be a disaster, resulting in the deaths of a large number of people.

Such a prospect now haunts the non-agricultural market access (NAMA) negotiations. The learned chair responsible for the negotiations to liberalise global trade in industrial goods first produced a text based on what he thought is the best course for members, without incorporating proposals that would have truly reflected the democratic-cum-multilateral credentials of the negotiations. Therefore, he chose to simply exclude proposals from a majority of members without any rationale . He even recommended that ministers "adopt the first of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

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First Published: May 27 2008 | 12:00 AM IST