Revised WTO drafts not suited to India: Ficci

The revised draft texts on agriculture and Non Agricultural Market Access (NAMA) in the World Trade Organisation talks do not suit Indian interests, a statement released by industry association Ficci said here today. The latest text, especially on NAMA, dealing with industrial goods, is likely to be opposed by India, as it retains many of the earlier provisions, which had earlier been rejected by many developing countries.

Ficci pointed out that the new revised text on NAMA failed to follow the Doha mandate of "less than full reciprocity" in tariff reduction, according to which developed countries were to have deeper cuts in import duties than the developing countries.

The first draft text was released in July last year and was rejected by countries like India. The latest text on NAMA has retained tariff reduction coefficient of 8-9 for developed members and 19-23 for developing countries. This would mean that countries like India will have to have a range of cuts of bound import duties in between 60 to 65 per cent while for the US, the range will lie in between 27 to 29 per cent. In the case of European Union, the cut in industrial goods import duties range will range from 30 to 33 per cent, if the current draft is accepted.

"These set of coefficients, if applied in tariff reduction formula, would result in relatively greater tariff cut for India and other developing members, compared with developed economies like the US and EU," said Amit Mitra, secretary general, Ficci.

Ficci also said that the Non Agricultural Market Access text does not address issues related to flexibilites, that should be available to developing countries.

Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, in a recent release said that the previous draft text on Non Agricultural Market Access was unbalanced and reflected the views and ambition of only one set of developed countries.

Ficci also maintained that the latest text on agriculture could be a starting point for negotiations on detailed modalities. However, it maintained that the latest text will lead to reduction in controversial agriculture subsidies given by the US to $13 to $16.4 billion from the existing bound level of some $48 billion, which was not acceptable.

"In order to redress the historical distortions and imbalances in world agriculture trade, it is important that this level is brought down to the range of $11-12 billion," the release said.

According to India, more than 40 issues in agricultural negotiations have to be clearly addressed in the draft texts, without which a balanced deal on Doha Round was not possible.

The Ficci release said that on agricultural issues like tariff escalation, the provision should be applicable only to developed countries and not the developing ones. More over, the text does not include items like milk products, meat and meat products, oranges, grapes, apples, rice, mangoes in the tariff escalation provisions, which are of export interest to India.

In addition, Ficci pointed out that on the crucial issue of special safeguard mechanism, which is related to livelihood security of Indian farmers, the conditions proposed in the revised text are restrictive.