The Hindu : Study the issue without haste

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 21, 2003

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Study the issue without haste — Jaitley

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI MAY 20. Highlighting India's concerns over the efforts to push towards a multilateral investment framework, the Union Commerce and Industry Minister, Arun Jaitley, today urged developing countries to study the issue without haste in the run-up to the Cancun ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Mr. Jaitley said "We need to be clear whether a multilateral framework in this important area is at all necessary before we embark on any discussion about the modalities themselves. We also need to be particularly cautious about moves that may try to suggest that modalities can be limited to procedural matters".

He also expressed concern over the failure to achieve any significant breakthrough in areas of concern to developing countries in the Doha Work Programme. These include special and differential treatment, implementation issues and the residual issue relating to TRIPs and public health.

Delivering the valedictory address at an international seminar on trade and investment organised jointly by the Commerce Ministry and UNCTAD, he noted that on the other hand, on certain issues such as non-agricultural market access, there were calls for "high levels of ambition". In this context, he felt it was not possible to ignore the differences in attitudes and approaches to issues of particular interest to developing countries.

Mr. Jaitley stressed that India is against any curtailing of policy space on the issue of investment and maintained that developing countries should not be coerced to feel compelled to take decisions in areas of vital importance unless they are fully convinced it is in their interest to do so. "This in my view is the essential meaning of the principle of explicity consensus" as mandated in the Doha declaration, he said.

The Minister questioned the need both for a multilateral framework on investment and whether the WTO is the appropriate forum for this purpose. He stressed that national treatment was a sensitive issue both at the pre-establishment and post-establishment stages and questioned whether multilateral rules were necessary for promoting foreign investment especially when autonomous liberalisation had been progressing well.

It should not foreclose for developing countries such options that the developed countries themselves had utilised at earlier stages of their development, he said.

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