The World Trade Organisation on Wednesday asked India and other emerging economies to adopt a flexible approach on industrial tariffs for giving a push to the ongoing trade negotiations and meeting the crucial April 30 deadline sealing the deal in agriculture.
"We are approaching the moment of truth in next few days. The European Union, the United States and other developed countries will have to reduce subsidies in agriculture, their agriculture tariffs also should come down but developing countries like India, Brazil and South Africa will also have to reduce their industrial tariffs.
"This round is development round and trade needs to be rebalanced in favour of developing countries," World Trade Organisation Director General Pascal Lamy said, expressing optimism about meeting the deadline.
Asserting that he was catalysing the 'most important' deal for every country, he said India which had both defensive and offensive interests in both agriculture and industrial goods could do much more in terms of reducing its tariffs by bringing down the gap between its applied tariffs and those bound at the WTO.
Lamy said India had lot more to gain than it has to pay to and there was a need to weigh options in offensive and defensive areas.
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