India demands a balanced Doha agreement

India along with several developing countries on Monday warned the chair for Doha market opening talks on industrial products that his revised draft text must "reflect" the concerns of all members, failing which it "would be an invitation for trouble".

"We are part of a solution and want to get a balanced Doha agreement in all areas," Rahul Khullar, India's chief trade negotiator, told an informal meeting of Doha negotiations to liberalise trade in industrial products.

The meeting is being convened by the chair for Doha non-agricultural market access (NAMA) negotiations, Ambassador Don Strephenson of Canada, to know members' final positions before he issues the revised draft text that would suggest the parameters for cutting down import tariffs on industrial products.

But India "will not be part of any old solution", Khullar warned the chair, suggesting that if Ambassador Stephenson chooses to continue with his old draft modalities issued last year, he would push the negotiations in an unmitigated danger zone.

In July 2007, the chair suggested a coefficient between 8 and 9 for industrialized countries and between 19 and 23 for developing countries to be used in the Swiss formula to cut industrial tariffs.

India's industrial tariffs, which are above 30 per cent, will come down to below 13 per cent if a coefficient of 23 is used. They would further come down if a coefficient of 19 is used.

At the same time, industrial tariffs of many industrialized countries would be left almost untouched by this formula given their current bound tariffs below 5 per cent, said analysts.

India, Brazil and Argentina, who are members of the NAMA 11 coalition, said the final figures to cut the industrial tariffs should be based on the principle of less than full reciprocity and the Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration.

Effectively, the chair's earlier draft undermined the paragraph 24 of the Hong Kong Ministerial declaration which called for comparable level of ambition between agriculture and NAMA, Khullar told Business Standard.