Hitting out at the developed nations for their attitude towards the World Trade Organisation negotiations, India on Monday warned against the Doha round being hijacked by the European Union and the United States.
There were efforts to push ahead those items of interest to the developed nations on the Doha round and go slow on areas of concerns to the developing countries like developmental and implementation issues, Commerce and Industry Minister Arun Jaitley told a national symposium on the agenda towards Cancun, in New Delhi.
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"The phase of progress on development and implementations issues is significantly slower," Jaitley said, asserting that India and several developing countries wanted that these be brought to the centre stage as "we move on road to Cancun."
Stressing that trade reforms were easier in the European Union and the United States which have "witnessed and experienced the fruits of development", Jaitley said in vibrant democracies, like India, reforms become more complicated as they have not seed yet fully the fruits of development.
At every stage of reforms, elementary issues were raised in countries like India, he said, adding reforms are far simpler to carry forward in the developed countries than in developing countries.
On agriculture, he said India and other developing countries will press for the phased elimination of farm subsidies, which denied market access to the developing countries.
Jaitley said 650 million people in India depended on agriculture and hence "our concerns have social and economic consequences."
On Trips and Public Health, Jaitley said India hoped a solution would be found at Cancun and it was precisely for this reason India had broadly agreed to the December draft despite having certain reservations.
"We are close to a solution and we hope the issue would be put to sleep at Cancun," he said.
Regarding non-agriculture market access, Jaitley said India did not expect significant movement forward at Cancun in the light of the proposal made jointly by the United States, Canada and the European Union, which was loaded against the interest of developing countries.
Elaborating on four Singapore issues comprising trade and investment, competition, trade facilitation and transparency in government procurement, Jaitley said the consequences have obviously to be analysed.
In such a scenario, Jaitley said he did not see the possibility of having an explicit consensus at Cancun on the modalities for starting WTO negotiations on contentious Singapore issues.
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