India will be pushing for completion of the Doha round of World Trade Organisation negotiations at the informal ministerial meet to be held here on September 3-4.
Insisting that the country’s stand on the contentious issues have not changed, a senior commerce ministry official said the meeting would be on the lines of the ‘Save Doha’ meeting hosted by India in 2006.
“We seriously want the Doha round to complete, though there is no change in our negotiating stance. We do not want to be seen as a country which is blocking the negotiations. Invitations have been sent to 36 countries and so far we have received confirmation from 20,” said the official.
The official said the meeting would not be based on a specific agenda and would try to work out some understanding on the time for concluding the round. It will also involve a review of the progress on the Doha round by key stakeholders.
Even while the Delhi summit is being perceived as a lobby effort on countries having defensive interests in agriculture, one of the focus areas of India in the discussions in the summit would be to push negotiations on trade in services, which have largely remained in the background till now. “Services should be given equal priority as the agriculture sector, as we are a country with a large majority of young people. This is one of the issues we want to raise,” the commerce ministry official said.
The strategic importance of the three-day Delhi summit stems from the fact that it would be followed by the main ministerial-level meeting of global trade ministers at the WTO headquarters in Geneva towards the year-end.
The visiting ministers are also expected to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Last month, commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma had said he is looking forward to the Delhi meeting of trade ministers to revive the negotiations. The summit is taking place after a meeting of the global trade ministers in Bali earlier this year.
“Technical discussions at WTO will resume this month. By the end of July, we can expect to have the roadmap for the negotiations. Full-fledged negotiations will most probably resume in September,” Sharma had said.
