Luzius Wasescha, Switzerland's chief negotiator to the World Trade Organisation and the head of the trade committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, on Friday made a case for a multilateral agreement on investment and said India should actively participate in the negotiations.
"India's position is based on sovereignty and a feeling that multilateral agreements will restrict some of its freedom. But whatever the position, it should actively participate in the negotiations," he said at an interactive session on WTO, organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
A multilateral agreement on investment is one of the Singapore issues that is being opposed by India.
"Any form of trade is based on investment," he said, adding that comparable multilateral rules on investment were needed to protect investors' interests.
When asked about immigration laws acting as barriers in free movement of professionals from developing countries like India, he said it was best to deal with visa and immigration problems at a bilateral level.
Wasescha said the issue of services had a tricky political dimension. He expressed hope that with the enlargement of the European Union, there would be investment in new areas and people's tendency to move from one place to another would decrease.
He said there was a tendency to put competitive exporters and non-competitive agriculturists on the same level.
He defended the policy of high subsidies to the agriculture sector, saying farmers needed support because they were in a transformation stage from a centrally-planned to a market-oriented agriculture.
Terming the issue of access to drugs as an emotional issue, he said the question was what could WTO do to help patients facing health crisis.
"The question is whether we can bring us on board," he said.
"Deadlines are negotiating tools. We should not dramatise deadlines," he said when asked to comment on the issue.
Under the WTO, a number of deadlines for reaching an agreement under the Doha agenda, including Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights and public health and market access for non-farm products, have been missed.
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