Comments
India had sought and succeeded in obtaining a “re-affirmative ministerial decision” on public stockholding for food security purposes at the recent Nairobi WTO ministerial, despite the future of the Doha Round appearing to be in doubt.
This was stated by the Commerce and Industry Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.
Making a suo-motu statement regarding India’s stand at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), she said that India also negotiated a ministerial decision which recognises that developing countries will have the right to have recourse to a special safeguard mechanism (SSM) as envisaged in the mandate.
Members will continue to negotiate the mechanism in dedicated sessions of the Committee on Agriculture in Special Session, the Minister said. The WTO General Council has been mandated to regularly review the progress of these negotiations, she added.
She also said that developed countries have committed to removing the export subsidies immediately, except for a few agricultural products, and developing countries will do so by 2018.
Developing countries will keep the flexibility to cover marketing and transport subsidies for agriculture exports until the end of 2023, and the LDCs and net food importing developing countries would have additional time to cut such export subsidies, she said.
Comments
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.