India on Wednesday said a balance between policy and multilateral commitments was necessary to provide a durable basis for development.
At the same time, it strongly criticised the plethora of discriminatory and intractable entry barriers inhibiting market access for developing countries.
"India wants to ensure that the multilateral trading system incorporates flexibilities to reflect and address the basic developmental concerns of our people. This requires the retention by developing countries of policy space as they seek to integrate beneficially into the trading system," Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath said, while addressing the plenary session of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad ) XI at Sao Paulo.
"While asking countries to assume new obligations and implement existing ones, we should strive for a balance between policy space and multilateral commitments," he said.
The minister expressed concern that while tariff barriers were being lowered, a plethora of more discriminatory and intractable entry barriers had made effective market access for developing country exports increasingly difficult.
Calling for the mainstreaming of development into international trade, Kamal Nath said a vital aspect for the equity of the multilateral trading system was the way it accommodated the constraints of developing countries.
Meanwhile, an Unctad study said India should opt for a partial liberalisation of its tariffs to alleviate poverty, while seeking full liberalisation from developed countries.
The report has said though trade liberalisation and its concomitant growth can assist India significantly, it will not help eradicate poverty.
The report points out that during the post-Uruguay round period of trade liberalisation, India's poverty alleviation rate dropped one per cent per year.
Despite this, 26 per cent of India's 1.2 billion population are still under the official poverty line.
The report points out that the potential for poverty alleviation from services trade liberalisation has been largely ignored.
"While services may not directly employ people below the poverty line, liberalisation has made a number of services accessible at economic prices to a the poor.
"It is essential to lock in commitments on services liberalisation so that there is no backlash as can be observed in the case of BPOs in India. It is also important to obtain assured market access commitments, especially in the case of Mode 4 (movement of natural persons)," the report said.
"The low growth poverty elasticities in India suggest that government expenditure on healthcare, nutrition, education and other millennium development goals will have to be increased in order to alleviate poverty," the report said.
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