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India for rule-based multilateral trading system

SINGAPORE: Union Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath on Wednesday affirmed that “India wants a rule-based multilateral [trading] system.”

Speaking here on the sidelines of a series of meetings of regional economic ministers, Mr. Nath also expressed the “hope” that the Doha Round, now in a “pause,” could be completed next year.

After discussing the current impasse with Indonesian Minister Mari Pangestu, Chairperson of G-33 in the Doha Round context, Mr. Nath said senior officials from the negotiating countries would meet next week in Geneva to pick up the threads. Top officials of the World Trade Organisation, like Pascal Lamy, had also contacted Mr. Nath after the onset of the latest impasse.

Maintaining that the Doha Round had not collapsed, Mr. Nath told journalists here that the talks would “revive” at the official level in any case.

Asked if the U.S. or the West now expected New Delhi to “deliver” at the Doha Round as a trade-off for Washington’s inclination to “deliver” a pro-India civil nuclear energy deal, Mr. Nath said: “There is no such thing. I don’t think these are connected issues. Every country does what is best in its national interest. It applies to the United States, applies to India.” On the issues still at stake in the Doha Round, Mr. Nath said: “We can’t go backwards. Completion is important but content is equally important. The developing countries can’t be salvaging the economies of the developed countries. The key to the lock of the deadlock is not in our hands, the key is in the hands of the developed countries. The issue of Special Safeguard Mechanism is an issue of livelihood security. It is not an issue to service the commercial interests of countries. There can be no trade-off between livelihood security issues and commercial interests. There are other issues which are as important as this — tariff simplification, product-specific caps in subsidies and of course the issue of subsidies itself. The headline issue is subsidies; the headline issue is the product-specific caps.”

Asked if India was now on the “defensive” in a new “blame game,” Mr. Nath said: “We have never been defensive. Defensive, for what? I am not looking at it as a game. All the issues are on the table. Everybody says there is so much on the table. What is on the table must also be in my plate. We want this to move.”

On India’s current economic outlook, he said “inflation will come down,” although “there is no switch which can be put on and off.” There “is a supply side stress and there is a huge imported inflation, 80 per cent of our oil, roughly, is being imported, 50 per cent of our edible oil, 50 per cent of lentils. I do see that inflation has peaked off.”

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