No WTO deal is better than a bad deal, says Anand Sharma

Anand Sharma asks whether developing countries should keep on compromising when right to food security is at stake 

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Activist holds a banner during a protest against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Bali, Indonesia on Thursday. India’s stand has posed the risk that the ministerial meeting in Bali would end in failure. Photo: Achmad Ibrahim/AP

New Delhi: Refusing to back down from his stance that food security is non-negotiable at the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) ministerial meeting in Bali, Indonesia, trade minister Anand Sharma said on Thursday that India would prefer to have no deal than a bad one.

But India still wants a positive outcome in Bali, and a deal is possible if a compromise is reached, he said, according to the audio transcript of a press conference addressed by the minister in the Indonesian city and posted on the WTO website.

“We have not come here to collapse any meeting,” Sharma said. “India is also committed to a balanced and fair outcome. There have been past meetings where no result was there. It is better to have no agreement than to have a bad agreement.”

India’s stand has posed the risk that the ministerial meeting in Bali would end in failure, further eroding the credibility of an institution under which no multilateral deal has been concluded since its formation in 1995.

Sharma said at the plenary session of the meeting, attended by delegates from 159 WTO members, on Wednesday that the current offer on food security and trade facilitation—the latter aims to harmonize and streamline global customs rules—was not acceptable to India.

Both are key building blocks in attempts to lay down the rules of world trade that have been deadlocked since the launch of the Doha round of multilateral trade talks in 2001.

The present draft, prepared in Geneva, provides developing countries temporary relief of up to four years, known as a “peace clause”, during which they cannot be challenged under the agreement on agriculture if they cross the permissible food subsidy ceilings. 

NITESH KUMAR

PGDM 1ST

SOURCE-- LIVEMINT.COM