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Pant blasts the West over non-tariff barriers

Deputy Chairman Planning Commission K C Pant on Wednesday criticised the industrialised countries for exploiting environmental standards laid down by the World Trade Organisation as non-tariff barriers to exports from developing countries.

''There is considerable discretion available to importing countries to impose their own rules regarding these standards and other regulations such as inspection of imported products, specific treatment or processing of products, fixing of minimum allowable level of pesticide residue and labelling and packaging requirements,'' Pant said.

He was inaugurating an international workshop on 'Environmental requirements and market access: addressing developing countries concerns.' The two-day conference has been organsied by the OECD Global Forum and Research and Information System for the non-aligned and other developing countries.

Pant was primarily referring to the WTO agreements on sanitary and phytosanitary measures and technical barriers to trade, which tend to provide that these standards and regulations were not arbitrarily used for protectionist purposes and do not have an adverse impact on trade while protecting the interest of the consumer.

Pant said the SPS agreement allows importing countries to impose norms that are higher than international standards, provided there was a scientific basis.

"A number of countries have used very minute environmental risk assessments to justify much more stringent norms compared to international standards thus raising the compliance costs for the exporters. Another problem is the variation of standards across importing countries which further increase the compliance cost."

Pant said many of the standards were imposed in less than transparent manner and were sometimes accompanied by other requirements such as good manufacturing practice.

While the system of notifications under SPS and TBT agreements had produced a list of notifications on products of export interest to developing countries, not all enquiry points in member countries were functioning well in reacting to relevant notifications disseminating the information to exporters.

Serious gaps remain in information gathering and dissemination and capacity to respond adequately. Moreover, there was no obligation to notify to the WTO voluntary standards and buyers requirements, and information clearing house services for these do not exist as yet.

"The effect of these requirements is particularly severe for the small and medium sized exporters in developing countries who lack information on the requirements and the financial and technical capability to comply with them," Pant said.

Delivering the key note address, Jurgen Wiemann, deputy director, German Development Institute, said development assistance by multilateral and bilateral aid agencies should support activities relating to early warning information about upcoming new standards and regulations and help to establish the necessary infrastructure for testing and certification.

UNI

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