Commerce Minister Attends Informal Gathering
of WTO in Paris
Commerce and Industry Minister, Suresh Prabhu, attended an Informal Gathering of World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministers in Paris on 31 May 2018. Twenty-Eight
(28) member countries of the WTO and the Director General of the WTO attended
the informal meeting.
In his intervention, the Minister observed that
there were already a number of Ministerial mandates to guide work at the WTO and
negotiators have been working for years on many issues. He said that work should be resumed based on existing
mandates, Declarations and decisions, expressing the belief that it would be counterproductive
and harmful to the system to ignore the Ministerial mandates and all the work done
so far and re-set the negotiations.
He emphasised that political
engagement in the process was critical for moving forward and drew attention to
the informal gathering hosted in New Delhi in March this year. He mentioned that
almost all the participants at the New Delhi meeting were of the view that greater
engagement was the only way forward.
The Minister cautioned that while some countries
viewed plurilateral discussions as a stepping stone to
multilateral agreements, such initiatives could, on the contrary, weaken the multilateral
trading system and undermine the inclusive institutional structure of the WTO.
Suresh Prabhu pointed
out that there is a Work Programme for E-commerce which
provides a forum for discussion within the WTO. He said that India has been actively
engaging in this even though it is premature to discuss binding multilateral rules
for E-commerce.
Observing that the WTO already has a full agenda,
he said that India has reservations about the introduction of new issues such as
Investment Facilitation in the WTO lest fundamental issues in agriculture and development
get neglected.
Mr. Prabhu stressed the
need to work together quickly to address the challenges which the WTO is facing
at present. This would mean maintaining and strengthening the basic principles of
inclusiveness, decision-making based on consensus and the centrality of development
in the negotiations and processes.
Stating that trade must contribute to development,
he said that governments in India and many other developing countries have to accord
priority to addressing the challenges in the journey towards greater trade liberalisation and global integration. He cautioned that any
endeavour at the WTO for reciprocal trade rules, which
ignored this reality, would further deepen the divide and aggravate the disenchantment
with globalisation.
He said that special and differential treatment
provisions for all developing countries, without exception, and LDCs are an integral
part of the WTO Agreement and this principle must be protected in future agreements
as well.
Observing that the dispute settlement arm of the
WTO was the central pillar in providing security and predictability to the system,
he urged members to commence the selection process to fill the vacancies in the
Appellate Body.
On the recent cycle of unilateral trade measures
and proposed counter measures, the Minster said that actions and counter actions
such as this could stop the fragile global economic recovery in its tracks, with
consequences for jobs, GDP growth and development that would harm everyone and could
also irrevocably damage the rules-based multilateral system built up with hard work
over many years. Instead of using such actions to deal with any inadequacy or unfairness
in the WTO provisions, the best course of action would be deal with such issues
within the WTO, he said.
In conclusion, Suresh Prabhu
expressed the view that such informal engagement at the political level could go
a long way in deepening a mutual understanding of issues and concerns and finding
ways of moving forward.
During his visit to Paris, the Commerce Minister
also had meetings with the Australian Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment
and the EU Trade Commissioner, during which various bilateral issues and ongoing
trade negotiations were discussed. He also met the DG WTO and discussed the current
international situation arising from various unilateral trade actions and counter
actions and the challenges facing the WTO.