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India to stress food security, rural development

Our Economy Bureau in New Delhi

India will focus on measures to ensure food security and rural development at the negotiations on market access.

It will also push for safeguarding certain sensitive sectors of the Indian economy that would be particularly vulnerable as a result of liberalisation.

Spelling out India's priorities in the area of market access, Minister for Commerce and Industry, Arun Shourie said that the flexibilities required by developing countries in the areas of agriculture and non-agricultural products and services should not be circumscribed in the market access negotiations.

"Market access should be calibrated in such a manner that it does not create economic upheaval and consequently social and political unrest, specially in the developing countries," he said at the informal World Trade Organisation Ministers meet in Sydney.

Drawing attention to the fact that fluctuations in international prices of agricultural commodities could erode rural incomes, he said that non-tariff measures should not prevent access of India's agricultural products to the markets of developed countries.

Similarly, substantive benefits to developing countries could accrue only if the developed countries eliminated tariff peaks and tariff escalations that are prevalent in sectors of importance to us, like textiles, leather and marine products, he said, pointing out that the mandate to do so was specific in the Doha Declaration.

Special and differential elements and the importance of not insisting on full reciprocity from developing countries in market access had also been provided in the Doha mandate, the minister said, adding that the current negotiations should proceed in the spirit of this mandate.

Proposals that some developed countries were pushing - like "zero for zero" and "tariff harmonization" - ran counter to what Doha had mandated, he said.

In the non-agricultural sector, safeguarding certain sensitive sectors of the Indian economy, like the small-scale industrial units, would be of paramount importance, he added.

Circumstances of the developing countries would have to be reckoned in the negotiations, Shourie said, pointing out that around two-thirds of India's population depended on farming for their livelihood and small-scale units provide employment at low capital cost to 18 million workers.

Emphasising India's interest in services as a rapidly growing sector of the Indian economy, he said that India expected meaningful and fruitful negotiations covering several services sectors and all modes of delivery -in particular that the current round of negotiations would place greater emphasis on the movement of natural persons, thus correcting an important imbalance that had remained in the Uruguay and post-Uruguay Rounds.

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