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WTO extends ministerial in a desperate quest for consensus.
Jun 16, 2022

The World Trade Organization has extended its ministerial in Geneva by another day to Thursday to try and build consensus on the key issues of fishing subsidies, food security and measures to combat the Covid pandemic.

The four-day ministerial was to conclude on Wednesday, but director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala late Tuesday night decided to extend the talks by a day to reach some agreement.

The WTO takes decisions by consensus among its members. 'Progress is being made but it needs a little more work and more time,' the director-general said. This is the first WTO ministerial in five years.

On the fishing subsidies issue, India is staying with its initial demand for a 25-year transition, something many countries are not ready to agree to, and has rejected the draft agreement.

'The transition period of 25 years sought by India is not intended as a permanent carve-out. It is a must-have for us and for other similarly placed non-distant water fishing countries,' commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said in a statement.

India has argued that its fisheries subsidy at $15 per family per year was not even comparable to what some developed nations dole out, for example, $42,000 by the Netherlands, $65,000 by Sweden and $75,000 by Denmark.

Concessions Below Expectations

Also, the proposed pact on fisheries extended concessions only up to 24 nautical miles from the shore, up from 12 miles as incorporated in the original draft text. The concession is far below what India had asked for - unrestricted fishing in the exclusive economic zone, meaning up to 200 nautical miles from the coast.

India has also locked horns with select developed nations - Switzerland and the UK in particular - on the waiver of Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and WTO's response to future pandemics.

Goyal has on record accused the developed world of nit-picking. 'My own feeling is not a single factory (to manufacture vaccines) will ever come up with the agreement that we are finally trying to negotiate,' he said.

In his formal interaction, minister Goyal, however, did not name either Switzerland or the UK - the two countries that were advocating in favour of their private pharmaceutical companies.

On public stockholding for food security, India asked the WTO why it was holding back its members from government-to-government purchases for humanitarian purposes. Here too, a group of nations with a strong agriculture base, for instance, Argentina, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand, has not yielded ground.

economictimes.indiatimes.com

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