G-4 talks breaks down in Potsdam - No compromise on Agri Market Access, Says Kamal Nath

Shri Kamal Nath, Minister of Commerce and Industry said today that the talks among the G-4 Ministers broke down in Potsdam (Germany) on 21 June, 2007 because of the failure of the developed countries to accept effective reductions in their agricultural subsidies and at the same time, seeking additional market access in the developing countries for their agricultural products, including for their highly subsidized ones. "Agreeing to this would have not only been against the mandate of the Doha Development Round, it would have seriously jeopardized the livelihoods of the farmers of the developing and least developed countries and threatened the food security of many poorer nations", Shri Kamal Nath said, emphasising that there was no question of any compromise on agricultural market access issues which would have affected our farmers.

The Trade Ministers of G-4 (India, Brazil, the EC and the US) met in Potsdam 19-21 June 2007. This was the second meeting of the G-4 Trade Ministers since April 2007, when they had charted out a road map in New Delhi for meetings among themselves to engage intensively on all the important issues relating to the stalled Doha Round negotiations of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The Ministers had resolved then to try to seek convergence on as many issues as possible by the third week of June, so as to facilitate a consensus in the larger multilateral process in the WTO.

On the issue of market access in non-agricultural products or industrial tariffs, the developed countries had proposed Swiss coefficients of 10 and 15 for themselves and developing countries respectively, which would have led to the former taking average tariff cuts in their industrial products of just over 30%, while the developing countries would have had to reduce their tariffs by more than 60% on an average. This could only have helped the developed countries to make heavy inroads into the markets of developing countries while offering negligible reciprocal gains to the latter. It also held out the specter of deindustrialization of the developing countries along with a reduction of foreign direct investment flows into them. This was totally unacceptable to the developing countries, as it would have led to increasing unemployment among their workforce.

The developed countries also expressed reluctance in allowing the reform of the current regime of trade defence measures including anti-dumping and countervailing duties, which have often been used unfairly by them against the developing countries, in order to curb their export growth. The other major issue was the unwillingness of the developed countries to accept the discipline of the International Convention on Bio-Diversity in the arena of patents and trademarks so as to allow untrammeled exploitation of traditional knowledge and natural genetic resources, without prior consent or benefit sharing with the community.

While expressing his disappointment at the failure of the G-4 talks, Shri Kamal Nath stated that the Doha Round had been announced as a Development Round and had raised the expectations of the developing world that it would help them tackle their problems of unemployment and poverty through increased trade opportunities. However, the current aspirations of many of the developed countries were totally oblivious to the development content of the Round and were instead focused mainly on seeking greater market access for their own products. The Minister expressed hope that India, which was a firm believer in a rule based, fair and transparent multilateral system of trade, would work with other like minded countries-both developing as well as developed, to bring about a successful conclusion of the Doha Round, which was truly reflective of the development objectives of the Round.

It may be recalled that prior to the Potsdam meeting, Shri Kamal Nath had participated in the meetings of the G-20, G-33 and NAMA-11 Ministers in Geneva on 11th June, 2007.

Source : Press Information Bureau

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