World Trade Organisation Director-General Roberto Azevedo has said that more than two months after the deadline on the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) had passed and despite intensive consultations, no solution to the Bali decisions impasse has been found.
In a blow to India’s continuing stand at the WTO, he said there seemed to be an ‘overarching reluctance’ to put other issues on hold while a ‘permanent solution’ was sought on Public Stockholding.
He said this was paralysing and degrading the WTO and could be the most serious situation the institution had ever faced and cautioned that going forward “work on substance seems unlikely to advance”.
The negotiations reached a major impasse in July after the Modi government refused to ratify the TFA protocol unless there was ‘satisfactory’ progress on the Public Stockholding proposal crucial to protecting India’s minimum support prices for its farmers against the WTO’s prescribed caps for which India wanted a ‘permanent solution’.
Despite a series of meetings and negotiations after that, no solution had been found to the impasse as a result of which, said Mr. Azevedo in a statement on Thursday, “is having a paralysing effect on our work across the board… [and] continuation of the current paralysis would serve only to degrade the institution.”
In the eight weeks until the December General Council, it seemed very unlikely that a detailed, precise, modalities-like work program was possible, he cautioned.
The WTO Ministers had set December 31 as the deadline for the post-Bali work program to find the permanent solution.
Mr. Azevedo said it was time to face up to the undeniable problems in the WTO and had an open and honest discussion about how to move forward. He called for Members’ views on next Tuesday’s General Council meeting on the way forward.
“The lack of ability to find full convergence quickly leads to deadlock, and deadlock leads to paralysis. We have seen this situation too many times. So we can’t continue in such an inefficient and ineffective way that is so prone to paralysis,” he said.
