India will make a case for permanently protecting its food security programme against penalties at the World Trade Organisation at an informal negotiation on global trade rules for agriculture in Geneva on Friday.

The Government, which is close to breaching permissible levels of farm subsidies, bought some time to continue with its price support regime for foodgrains without attracting penalties at a recent meeting of Trade Ministers of WTO member countries in Bali.

“We are looking for a permanent solution to the problem which may include excluding price support subsidies from the category of trade distorting ones that are actionable if they exceed given limits,” a Commerce Ministry official told Business Line .

Friday’s meeting will be the first agriculture negotiation, albeit at an informal level, after the Bali Ministerial meeting last December managed to break the deadlock in the Doha Round of talks. An agreement was reached by members on facilitating the flow of goods across countries through a Trade Facilitation. Members also decided to work on a way to deal with subsidies given by developing countries to farmers for procuring items for their food support programmes.

According to WTO rules, developing country members could give farm subsidies only up to 10 per cent of the production value of a particular item.

However, if the subsidy is not considered trade distorting, there is no such ceiling.

India runs the risk of breaching its subsidy limit, especially in rice, once it fully implements its food security legislation that entitles around 67 per cent of the population to 5 kg of subsidised foodgrain.

The Chairperson of the WTO’s Committee on Agriculture John Adank has invited delegations to informal agriculture negotiations on Friday to discuss how to proceed on concluding the on-going Doha Round of global trade talks based on the agreements reached in the Bali meeting. “The purpose is to consult members further on how to proceed in trying to conclude the rest of the Doha Round, with agriculture at the heart of the talks along with non-agricultural market access and services, now that the four agricultural issues in the ‘Bali Package’ have been agreed,” a person close to the development said.

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