India has said that it will drive the food security agenda at the World Trade Organisation and ensure that a permanent solution is found to the problem of providing farm subsidies for public stock holding so that they do not attract penalties.

“It has become extremely important for us to drive the food security agenda because there is every reason for the developed countries’ groupings to try and dilute the whole process and see that the food security proposal does not see an effective light of day,” Commerce Secretary Rajeev Kher said speaking at a conference on ‘Post-Bali agenda for WTO’ organised by industry chamber FICCI.

Kher added that India will not allow developed countries to “cherry-pick’’ issues of their interest out of the wide agenda of the Doha round and insist that an agreement on all issues is reached as part of a single undertaking.

“Developed countries are making huge efforts to cherry-pick items and pose that agenda in a selective manner to try and see if they can create a new post-Bali Doha agenda. Clearly India’s position is that we go for a single undertaking,” he said.

The Doha round, launched more than a decade ago, has been languishing as developed and developing countries have not been able to find a common ground for reaching an agreement on key issues such as market access for goods and reducing subsidies.

On the issue of food security, India wants a complete exclusion of subsidies given on account of public stock holding programmes from the category of actionable subsidies at the WTO.

In the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Bali last December, developed countries deferred a decision on the matter of food security for four years, but agreed to give a reprieve to developing countries in case they breached their subsidy limits. But the reprieve is tied to a lot of conditionalities including submission of paperwork and data that developing countries might find tedious. Kher said that while developed country interest groups would try to see that the search for a permanent solution continues forever, this is what India would have to fight against.

Trade facilitation

On the issue of ‘Trade Facilitation’ agreed to in Bali, he said that since it was an issue close to the heart of developed countries they would see to it that it gets implemented fast. Under the Trade Facilitation pact, members are required to upgrade their border infrastructure and speed up cargo clearing procedures.

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