No farm duty cuts without services deal: India

India has said that it is difficult for it to offer lower tariffs and subsidies in agriculture and further open up its industrial market without knowing what it is going to secure in services and for millions of its fishermen at the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

WTO Chief Pascal Lamy is keen to convene what are called the horizontal meetings, which will discuss the trade-offs between agriculture and Non-Agriculture Market Access (NAMA).

Indian Trade Envoy Ambassador Ujal Singh Bhatia said yesterday that New Delhi "cannot relinquish the leverage on agriculture and NAMA without in turn obtaining assurance that the issues of our interest will be favourably addressed."

India is concerned over attempts to negotiate the modalities that will indicate cuts in tariffs and subsidies in agriculture as well as cuts in import tariffs on industrial products without determining how other areas such as services will be addressed.

In a hard-hitting statement at an informal meeting of the trade negotiations committee (TNC), which oversees the Doha trade negotiations, India said, "Predetermined deadlines will not get us anywhere and may indeed be counterproductive," suggesting a ministerial meeting should only be called when the groundwork provided clear indication of a successful outcome.

Last week, 17 trade ministers met in Davos to discuss how to speed up the process to finalise an agreement in the Doha trade negotiations by the end of the year. They gave a green signal to the WTO director general to step up efforts in reaching an agreement on the modalities by April.

He informed members yesterday that after the chairs for the Doha agriculture and NAMA negotiations circulated their revised draft texts next week, members would proceed with specific meetings in these two negotiating bodies. Lamy said the chairs would decide when to commence the horizontal meetings, indicating the need to limit the scope of the modalities to agriculture and NAMA at this juncture. The United States and the European Union have indicated that they are comfortable with Lamy's timelines as well as limiting the scope.

However, several other members, including India, Japan, Norway and Switzerland are not happy with this schedule as they feel that their core interests are being given a short shrift.

But India fears that once the big players finalise an agreement on agriculture and NAMA, they will exert pressure on other countries to agree on minimal commitments in areas such as services and rules.

In services, for example, India wants to know what it is going to get in the movement of short-term services providers under Mode 4 and removal of restrictions on cross-border services.

Up until now, the US maintained that it could not provide much access in these two areas because of opposition from its domestic constituencies.

"We, therefore, urge you to propose a structured discussion to address this need," India's trade envoy said.

India also opposed the draft rules text for failing to comprehensively improve the provisions on anti-dumping, especially the controversial element of zeroing methodology and dilution of flexibilities for millions of poor fishermen in India.

"I would like to emphasise that India cannot engage solely on the agriculture and NAMA modalities without this issue, which affects the livelihoods of millions of poor people in India, being addressed," Bhatia said.