The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is ready to advance the deadline for finding a permanent solution on the issue of public stockholding for food security purposes to the end of next year.

On India’s insistence, a paragraph is being added to the Bali Ministerial Decision specifying that members shall engage to adopt a permanent solution by December 31, 2015, instead of 2017, an official privy to the on-going negotiations in Geneva told BusinessLine .

This follows the recent settlement between India and the US on the issues of food security and trade facilitation after it agreed to support certain changes in the provisions on food security in the Bali Ministerial Decision.

Along with the move to find a permanent solution by end 2015, the draft to amend the Bali Ministerial decisions will also make the peace clause, which gives immunity against action for breaching farm subsidy limits, perpetual.

However, the conditions on using the peace clause will remain.

“The draft decision on food security arrived at by all members on Monday together with the draft decision on the protocol for Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) is likely to be adopted at the WTO’s General Council meeting on November 26,” the official said.

New Delhi had refused to support a protocol on trade facilitation in July this year as it wanted its food security concerns to be adequately addressed.

India had wanted the peace clause to be made perpetual till a permanent solution was found.

It had demanded that as a permanent solution to the risk of its food procurement schemes leading to a breach in subsidy caps, they should either be dropped from the list of trade distorting subsidies, or calculated on a more recent base year or get indexed to inflation.

As per the WTO draft, negotiations on a permanent solution shall be held in the Committee on Agriculture in special sessions, distinct from agriculture negotiations under the broader Doha Round.

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