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Congress asks govt to be tough on WTO negotiations

Cautioning that multilateral trade negotiations are an ''unequal war'' loaded against developing countries, Congress on Wednesday asked the government to be ''tough'' in the new round of negotiations launched at Doha.

''It is an unequal world. Unless we resort to tough bargaining to maximise gains, we will not be able to protect the national interest,'' warned senior Congress member Pranab Mukherjee initiating a short-duration discussion on Doha ministerial declaration.

Mukherjee, who was commerce minister when the Marakkesh agreement was signed leading to the establishment of World Trade Organisation in 1994, said India's approach should be constructive.

Now that effective negotiations have started in agriculture, Mukherjee said India should make it clear that there could be no compromise as far as food security and minimum market access to developing countries' farm products are concerned.

Elaborating on food security, Mukherjee said on no count the government should give away the right to procurement and distribution as well as subsidy to maintain the public distribution system.

The senior Congress leader said it would be only through 'hard negotiations' that India will get some concessions, and not by trade.

Despite the global multi-lateral trade system, he said, half of the world trade was shared among the trade-blocks, mainly belonging to the developed and industrialised states. In this scenario it was difficult to get any trade concessions from the developed countries.

Mukherjee said every country could check imports of certain commodities to protect its own trade and industry.

Mukherjee said the government delegation at the Doha Conference had rightly taken up the implementation issues and blocked the efforts of the western countries to have a new round of agreements on trade and investments, trade and competitions and trade facilitation commitments.

Suggesting consolidation of some developing countries in regard to the implementation of certain WTO commitments, he said the commerce minister could call such a meeting to draw a joint trading strategy of the developing countries.

He also emphasised the need for negotiations on patent's law. He said that the GNP of 50 countries had substantially come down between 1990 and 1998 ever since the global liberalisation of trade had begun. India, along with other countries, could express against this trend at, the next round of WTO, to get the favourable concessions.

Citing his experience in the trade negotiations, he said during Uruguay Round, India gave in on TRIPS (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) agreement to secure phased dismantling of quota system in textiles by 2005 to benefit Indian textile industry.

The only protectionist measure that government could resort to after the dismantling of quantitative restrictions was tariff measures and this should not be bartered away in the negotiations, he said.

Mukherjee wanted Commerce Minister Murasoli Maran to be firm on the issue of sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures, a trade distorting measure which was increasingly used by developed countries.

(With additional inputs from UNI)

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