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No room for non-trade issues in WTO, says India

India on Tuesday said that there was 'no room' for non-trade issues in multilateral negotiations and that implementation concerns on the existing WTO agreements should be resolved upfront for the success of the ministerial meeting in Doha in November.

"We should use Doha to take stock of the situation on all unfinished work including mandated negotiations and implementation concerns of developing countries without linking them to new issues," Commerce and Industry Minister, Murasoli Maran, said.

In a letter to Group of 77 ministers to co-ordinate positions ahead of the fourth ministerial meeting, Maran said that multiple issues would crowd the agenda leading to a trade-off among participating countries.

"Bringing multiple issues on the table just to get substantial trade-offs and swap concessions advantageous for a few countries without any benefit to developing countries does not augur well for success of multilateral trading system."

Asking the G-77 to evolve a common position and strategy for the Doha meeting, he said that developing countries need to co-ordinate their positions on various WTO-related issues as 'full-stakeholders' in the multi-lateral trading system.

He said that any new item could be included only if it related to trade and if there was a general consensus among all WTO members on its inclusion in the agenda.

Noting with concern that significant non-trade issues were being promised in the name of trade liberalisation and constituency interests of the developed countries, Maran said that developing countries were not in a position to take on more commitments.

Maran said new issues could be taken up only after the likely impact on the additional rights, responsibilities and obligations were evaluated. Besides the situation should be ripe for such an inclusion.

He said that developing countries should get convinced as to how their inclusion is going to help or in any way hinder the realisation of their development objectives as enshrined in the Marrakesh Agreement.

He further stated that new issues should not constrain their domestic policy options for taking up development activities.

"Only the proposals which satisfy the above criteria and have endorsement by member-countries could be considered for inclusion," Maran said.

"As otherwise the sovereign government would not get a chance to discuss and evolve stakeholder-driven negotiating positions on such proposals if they are thrust on the membership without giving them sufficient notice," he added.

Maran also appealed that "lessons learnt from Seattle remained relevant for Doha and any new risks and cost of failure at Doha would greatly hurt the multilateral trading system".

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