India Inc blames West for WTO talks collapse

Disappointed over the failure of World Trade Organisation talks, India Inc has criticised developed countries over their stand and has said the collapse of talks is a setback to multilateral trade negotiations.

"This is not a good sign for trade liberalisation across the globe," the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has said in a statement.

The CII said it was sad that developed countries were unwilling to move despite other countries' willingness to be flexible on several issues.

"They (developed nations) only seemed keen to gain market access for their products and were not willing to look at providing access to other countries, especially the developing and least developed countries," RV Kanoria, chairman of the WTO committee of the CII, said.

The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) said it was disappointed over the failure of talks and added that the deadlock was caused because of the inflexible position adopted by developed countries.

The Federation of Indian Exports Organisation supported the stand taken by Commerce Minister Kamal Nath on farm subsidies and industrial tariffs.

Ficci President Saroj Poddar said the failure of the latest meeting was cause for concern for the Doha Development Round on which developing countries had placed a lot of hope.

He said the continued deadlock had hit hard the aspirations of countries like India to dismantle barriers in developed countries and lift millions out of poverty.

FIEO President OP Garg said India and other developing countries would have to convince rich nations to resume talks and understand the position of poor countries