WTO logjam may be broken at agri committee meet on Thursday

An end-of-the-week crucial meeting of the World Trade Organisation’s agriculture committee is likely to indicate if India and the US will break the deadlock on issues of food security and trade facilitation before the informal Christmas deadline.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already discussed with Commerce & Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and senior Commerce Ministry officials the minimum concessions on food security that India needs to try and secure in return for its support to a trade facilitation pact.

“We have communicated our decision to the Indian Mission in Geneva. We hope that the US, which has softened and has indicated its willingness to compromise, will recognise our reasonable approach and agree to what we want and so will other members,” a Government official told BusinessLine .

The WTO’s Committee on Agriculture, with representatives from all member countries, will meet on Thursday and could continue discussions on Friday as well if talks gain momentum, according to the schedule.

New Delhi wants a permanent peace clause protecting it against action from other countries in case its food procurement subsidies breach given caps (of 10 per cent of production of a particular crop). This means that the peace clause will stay active till members re-work the formula for calculating subsidies in a way that it doesn’t hurt India’s food security programmes.

It also wants the peace clause to be made more user-friendly with a number of conditions dropped that relate to supply of voluminous data and documents and proving that the subsidies were non-trade distortive to be dropped.

The on-going global trade talks got dead-locked in July when India refused to support a protocol on trade facilitation – a pact to ease flow of goods between borders by upgrading infrastructure and processes – as its concerns on food security were not getting adequately addressed.

The US, which had declined to make the peace clause permanent when India had put in this sole demand in July, is now willing to do so. It has softened as it has realised that it would not be able to get much support from other members into pushing India to support the trade facilitation pact without its consent.

India will also have to answer questions posed by the West on why it notified its domestic programmes in US dollars when it had taken on commitments in Indian rupees in 1986-88.

The shift in currencies gave India a distinct advantage. It brings down India’s subsidy levels as the dollar has appreciated substantially since the prices were notified.