The Hindu : Challenges in Cancun ministerial meet

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Apr 26, 2003

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Business

Challenges in Cancun ministerial meet

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI APRIL 25. The Union Commerce and Industry Minister, Arun Jaitley, today declared that developing countries such as India have two major challenges to face in the new ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation at Cancun.

First, he said they would have to show a high degree of resoluteness for ensuring that acceptable solutions are found for the unresolved issues of their concern. Second, they would have to bring their `collective wisdom' to prevent their larger trading partners from enlarging the WTO mandate by including issues that could affect market access.

Delivering the 37th convocation address of the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Mr. Jaitley said with the help of several like-minded developing countries, India had succeeded in getting a number of issues of its concern included in the Doha Ministerial Declaration which had laid down the mandate for the ongoing negotiations. However, expectations of developing countries for substantial progress in a number of areas since the negotiations began in early 2002 are yet to be realised as the deadlines have gone by, he pointed out.

On ASEAN, he said India is committed to working towards a free trade area in the next ten years. Referring to exports, he said these had grown by nearly 17 per cent in dollar terms during the first 11 months of the last financial year. This was significant particularly in the context of some appreciation of the rupee that had taken place in recent months. Foreign exchange reserves had also reached a unprecedented figure of over $70 billion which can take care of 15 months of imports.

"This is a welcome change from 1991 when the cover was good enough to finance imports for two weeks only," he said. Besides he pointed to the fact that service exports have registered significantly high rates of growth in recent years.

The Minister emphasised that the effective use of knowledge was becoming the most important factor for international competitiveness and for creating wealth and improving social welfare.

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