Doha round revival

— It appears that the world is now eagerly waiting for a conclusive Doha round as early as possible. The 19-member group of farm product exporting countries has expressed its intense desire that the disrupted forum of negotiations between the representatives of the developed and developing countries get restarted soon to find an honourable solution once and for all. According to this group, India and US who were the leading partners in earlier dialogues since July 2006, have now themselves favoured the resumption of Doha round of talks as soon as possible. What the foreign news media covering the Cairns Group Conference at Bali in Indonesia in early June, 2009 reported is that during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of this conference, Indian and US representatives have agreed to reset the stalled Doha round of trade liberalisation talks. While the Group of 19 urges the negotiators to soon reconvene in Geneva to map out a clear path towards conclusion of the Doha round and curve out the path before the European summer break, the Director General of World Trade Organisation, Pascal Lamy who met both the US representative and India’s new Commerce Minister, Anand Sarma has also been pressing hard for conclusion of Doha round by next year. The similar view is also expressed by the UK government as reported by the Director General of Commonwealth Development Council, Mohan Kaul in mid-May, 2009.

It may be recalled here that after the collapse of Doha negotiations twice in the course of two years – once in July, 2006 and again in July, 2008 – due to failure in meeting a ground of unanimity with respect to agricultural subsidy and industrial tariff between the developed and the developing countries, the key seven members of World Trade Organisation including India, the United States–and the European Union were again engaged in a week-long Geneva meet in mid-September last year. During that meet the damage control exercise was initiated by the World Trade Chief, Pascal Lamy himself who used his good offices in clinching the global trade deal since the earlier break down of WTO meet in nine days of tense negotations between the members generating blame game against each other, giving rise to a situation which seemed to have taken the members miles away from any point of reconciliation. In spite of this, however, India which had been one of the leading negotiators for developing nations assured that New Delhi was always committed to a constructive role in global trade and would remain ready to resume the same without, however, compromising on agro-subsidy and industrial tariff issues concerning the poor in that it could not negotiate the livelihood security of farmers in India or any other poor country of the world. Since USA under such understanding is now willing to meet in Geneva, it will be to the advantage of developing countries that the conclusive round of Doha talks be held at the earliest. SOURCE: THE SENTINEL