The Hindu : India to take tough stand at Tokyo WTO meet

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 12, 2003

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India to take tough stand at Tokyo WTO meet

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI Feb. 11. The coming Tokyo-based mini-ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) will see India seeking to maintain continuity with the policy stances taken at the Doha conference. An official delegation led by the Commerce and Law Minister, Arun Jaitley, will also take a firm stand on the issue of market access in agriculture and services as a large population is dependent on these sectors.

Disclosing this here today on the eve of his departure, Mr. Jaitley said the effort would be to evolve a consensus with other developing countries on many key trade issues at the meeting which was one of several slated to be held in the run-up to the WTO Cancun ministerial conference in September.

The high-level delegation includes the Agriculture Minister, Ajit Singh, in view of the critical nature of negotiations in this area where Mr. Jaitley pointed out that there was little scope for flexibility.

While he said the precise policy stances could not be divulged prior to the conference, he stressed that there was no dilution of the stand taken by this country at the Doha ministerial conference in November 2001. Responding to questions, he also underlined the fact that there would be "a lot more continuity'' despite the changes at the top level in the Commerce Ministry.

Other members of the official team include the Commerce Secretary, Dipak Chatterjee, the Additional Secretary, S.N.M. Menon, and India's Ambassador to the WTO in Geneva, K.M. Chandrashekhar. The focus of negotiations at the Tokyo mini-ministerial is expected to be on agriculture and trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPs) and health. The agenda of the meeting will include market access-related issues covering agriculture as well as non-agricultural products and services, the four Singapore issues, development-related issues, rules and general discussions on the road to Cancun. Mr. Jaitley told reporters that the discussions at Tokyo would be on various issues covered under the work programme which was agreed by ministers at the Doha conference in November 2001. The objective of the mini-ministerial meet is to see how further progress can be made in taking forward the Doha work programme by the time of the next ministerial conference of the WTO proposed to be held in Cancun, Mexico later this year.

Mr. Jaitley pointed out that there was not much change in the approach to the four Singapore issues of investment, competition, trade facilitation and transparency in government procurement, barring the fact that this country now had a modern competition law in place.

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