India, led by Commerce and Industry Minister, Suresh Prabhu, is expected to adopt a four-pronged strategy at the Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) at Buenos Aries from December 10-13, 2017.
One, in a world that is leaning towards regional and bilateral trade agreements, India will want the Ministerial to strongly reaffirm the commitment of the 160 member countries to the multilateral platform for trade liberalization and rule making; two, push hard to get a clear mandate on finding a permanent solution to public stock holding for agricultural commodities to address food security concerns; three, ensure member countries do not move away from the not-yet-concluded Doha Development Agenda by introducing new issues like investment facilitation in WTO's negotiating mandate; and finally not support any comprehensive negotiations for an agreement on e-commerce. On a many of these issues, though positions may slightly vary, India is expected to find support from many other developing countries including China and South Africa.
Public Stock Holding
The most important issue for India will be to drive a consensus for a permanent decision on public stock holding for agricultural products that reflects the demands of a group of developing countries called G-33 with strong interests in food security issues like Philippines and Indonesia besides India.
New Delhi will want member countries of WTO to adopt a mandate on public stock holding that goes beyond the interim solution of a permanent peace clause that was agreed at the Ministerial meeting at Bali, Indonesia in 2013. One element of the currently available permanent peace clause that irks India is the onerous responsibility of complying with existing and additional notification requirements and admitting that the country is exceeding, or is at the risk of exceeding, its ceiling of entitlement to provide product-specific domestic support. India has been strongly advocating the removal of the existing asymmetry in WTO's Agreement on Agriculture where developed countries have far more leeway than developing countries in subsidizing agricultural commodities.
India has, over the last few years, invested a lot of its negotiating energy on this issue and will, therefore, expect some favourable decisions from other member countries at Buenos Aires.
There could, however, be some roadblocks to finding a solution. First, US has been conspicuously absent from any serious negotiations in the run up to Buenos Aires, second EU has been wanting to link a permanent solution with stringent disciplines on domestic support provided by developing countries, including India and third the countries are seeking a commitment that direct or indirect exports of public stockholdings will be prohibited.
E-Commerce
The proposal on e-commerce for a possible start of negotiations has been doing the rounds for several months in Geneva, Switzerland where the WTO is headquartered and is expected to be among the top priorities for negotiators at Buenos Aires.
E-commerce is not new to WTO and has been on the list of to-do negotiations since 1998 and India would like the countries to maintain a status quo on the issue. Currently countries have agreed to have a moratorium on duties on all digital products shipped through e-commerce. This moratorium has been extended every two years since 1998.
However, in the last one-year the “Friends of E-commerce” Group at the WTO which, include Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Uruguay have been stating that there is a need to push comprehensive negotiations on e-commerce for “development”.
India does not support any negotiating outcome for e-commerce. India is of the view that there is already a mandate for specific technical committees at the WTO to study and deliberate on the issue and there is no need to have any immediate negotiating mandate on this issue for the present. However, there will be reasonably high pressure from countries including the EU for a possible work programme on this emerging sector.
Trade & Investment
Another proposal at the Ministerial that India will not support is the inclusion of investment as a subject for negotiations within the WTO. India has always been opposed to the introduction of investment in the WTO stating that it is not a trade issue. There are, however, several proposals on the table at Buenos Aires supporting the inclusion of investment for negotiations at the WTO. One such proposal is from “Friends of Investment Facilitation For Development” comprising Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Hong Kong, Mexico, Nigeria and Pakistan. Besides these there are other proposals separately from Argentina and Brazil, one from China and another from Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey and Australia (MIKTA).
The focus of most of these proposals is to further cross-border investments by including issues such as improvement in regulatory transparency and predictability, streamlining and speeding up administrative procedures and enhancing international cooperation and addressing the needs of developing countries.
Fishery Subsidies
While there is a lot of ground that needs to be covered in many issues that are on the table at the Ministerial, one area where countries seem to converging is on the issue of fishery subsidies. These negotiations are primarily aimed at providing a framework to discipline fisheries subsidies by WTO members. However, the outcome will also have to reflect the special needs of the developing and least developed countries.
There are several other issues including disciplining domestic regulation in services to proposals to benefit medium, small and micro enterprises. India has some reservations on these proposals and is not likely to support any move to take it forward in the way it exists at present.
Following the inaugural of the conference on Sunday, negotiations are expected to get intense over the next three days and ministers will be under pressure to ensure that the Ministerial delivers enough for countries to keep their faith in the multilateral trading system.