The food security issue
Source: By G. Srinivasan: The Echo of India
A very few global gathering attracts glitz and glamour as the ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO), normally scheduled every two years but which subsequently got off tangent after the Hong Kong Ministerial ended in fiasco in 2005 and its predecessor Cancun (Mexico) in 2003.
The ninth ministerial of the world trade monitoring body, currently under way in the attractive tourist resort Bali (Indonesia) is expected to come out with a Bali package on December 6 when the proceeding winds up after two-days of plenary session in which trade ministers and envoys of its 159 members make their formal statements. India has fielded the Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Mr. Anand Sharma as the leader of the delegation.
Very few could forget how India signed the Marrakesh Agreement establishing the WTO in the last month of 1994 by the then Commerce Minister Mr. Pranab Mukherjee when the whole deal was excoriated by the leading Opposition parties as a sell-out, though India had been a founder member of the erstwhile the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) that evolved a rule-based multilateral trading system in the post-war era.
Since its first meet in Singapore in 1996, the WTO has had a series of shaky journey in its bi-annual ministerial in the run-up to the 2001 ministerial at the Qatari capital Doha in 2001, when the Doha Round was launched. It is more than a decade that the ill-fated Doha Round is proving worse than the Tokyo and Uruguay rounds that preceded it in liberalizing global trade in merchandise goods and services.
It is not that the global leaders who displayed exemplary cooperative spirit in forging a rule-based trading system had become weary over the years in the face of several troubles in the global economy that they are no longer willing to cede ground on their national sovereignty such a multilateralism mechanism demands. On the other hand, each country is facing a peculiar set of problems of its own and also as a fall-out of the liberalization and globalization of its economy that the adjustment cost and its associated pains trumped up any substantive or substantial gains free and fair trade might engender.
Since the breakdown of talks in 2008 ministerial which produced watered-down texts on several contentious issues, the two important pillars of the talks-- agricultural subsidies the rich nations give to their farmers and further cuts in industrial tariffs by the developing nations-- remain sticky and unresolved till date.
Moreover, the 2008 global financial meltdown and the halting recovery of the global economy in general and that of industrial countries in particular over the last five years meant the complete absence of zeal from the trade majors to chant hosannas to free trade lest their domestic constituencies should revile them or throw them out of the saddle.
Protectionism of the past genre may have become passé but the world is now getting inured to a different non-tariff and subtle form of resistance to market access, either for goods or for free movements of persons as service providers. In downturn, people and the authorities by and large tend to be myopic that erodes their faith in and deliverance of multilateralism.
Set against this somber reality, the Bali package cover measures on “trade facilitation” to streamline customs procedures and minimize unnecessary border delays, delivering jobs and opportunities in times of acute unemployment and laggard growth. The WTO reckons that these simple steps are worth upto one trillion dollar ($1000 billion) per year for the global economy. Though the package would deliver technical assistance in this domain to bolster the better integration of developing and least-developed countries (LDCs) into the global economy, past experience of the rich world in this regard remain best intentions move with no transfer of benefits to the needy up till now. There is also a package for the LDCs which is mandatory in all ministerial to serve the poorest of the globe who have been hit particularly hard by the policy of economic deregulation and free and unfair trade the so-called Washington Consensus wrought since the 1990s.
India is vulnerable on the latter as the National Food Security Act recently passed by Parliament entails huge subsidy outgo on this count. That is the reason why Mr. Sharma has made all noises that India would remain obdurate on the core agenda of food security before his departure.
Later addressing a meeting of the G-33 in Bali he maintained that “it is difficult for us to accept an interim solution as it has been currently designed” meaning that the four-year reprieve before the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) kicked in by way of peace clause is also not an acceptable measure till a lasting solution is found to this fundamental concern of food security.
Just as the Cancun ministerial in 2003 failed on the issue of drastically cutting down the rich countries’ farm subsidies, the issue of food security raised by India and other like-minded nations—not many—might play spoilsport.
That is the reason why Chair and Vice Chairs of the Bali Ministerial in their statement in Geneva last month expressed concerns that they do not have agreement on the negotiating texts needed to succeed in Bali. The jury will be out in a couple of days as to how far the trade ministers and envoys buried their differences to come on board by evincing flexibility and willingness to work in concert to score a substantive deal. But this is too much asking for the politicians as they prefer business as usual to evolving any consensus for the Doha Round to succeed belatedly.
A very few global gathering attracts glitz and glamour as the ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO), normally scheduled every two years but which subsequently got off tangent after the Hong Kong Ministerial ended in fiasco in 2005 and its predecessor Cancun (Mexico) in 2003.
The ninth ministerial of the world trade monitoring body, currently under way in the attractive tourist resort Bali (Indonesia) is expected to come out with a Bali package on December 6 when the proceeding winds up after two-days of plenary session in which trade ministers and envoys of its 159 members make their formal statements. India has fielded the Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Mr. Anand Sharma as the leader of the delegation.
Very few could forget how India signed the Marrakesh Agreement establishing the WTO in the last month of 1994 by the then Commerce Minister Mr. Pranab Mukherjee when the whole deal was excoriated by the leading Opposition parties as a sell-out, though India had been a founder member of the erstwhile the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) that evolved a rule-based multilateral trading system in the post-war era.
Since its first meet in Singapore in 1996, the WTO has had a series of shaky journey in its bi-annual ministerial in the run-up to the 2001 ministerial at the Qatari capital Doha in 2001, when the Doha Round was launched. It is more than a decade that the ill-fated Doha Round is proving worse than the Tokyo and Uruguay rounds that preceded it in liberalizing global trade in merchandise goods and services.
It is not that the global leaders who displayed exemplary cooperative spirit in forging a rule-based trading system had become weary over the years in the face of several troubles in the global economy that they are no longer willing to cede ground on their national sovereignty such a multilateralism mechanism demands. On the other hand, each country is facing a peculiar set of problems of its own and also as a fall-out of the liberalization and globalization of its economy that the adjustment cost and its associated pains trumped up any substantive or substantial gains free and fair trade might engender.
Since the breakdown of talks in 2008 ministerial which produced watered-down texts on several contentious issues, the two important pillars of the talks-- agricultural subsidies the rich nations give to their farmers and further cuts in industrial tariffs by the developing nations-- remain sticky and unresolved till date.
Moreover, the 2008 global financial meltdown and the halting recovery of the global economy in general and that of industrial countries in particular over the last five years meant the complete absence of zeal from the trade majors to chant hosannas to free trade lest their domestic constituencies should revile them or throw them out of the saddle.
Protectionism of the past genre may have become passé but the world is now getting inured to a different non-tariff and subtle form of resistance to market access, either for goods or for free movements of persons as service providers. In downturn, people and the authorities by and large tend to be myopic that erodes their faith in and deliverance of multilateralism.
Set against this somber reality, the Bali package cover measures on “trade facilitation” to streamline customs procedures and minimize unnecessary border delays, delivering jobs and opportunities in times of acute unemployment and laggard growth. The WTO reckons that these simple steps are worth upto one trillion dollar ($1000 billion) per year for the global economy. Though the package would deliver technical assistance in this domain to bolster the better integration of developing and least-developed countries (LDCs) into the global economy, past experience of the rich world in this regard remain best intentions move with no transfer of benefits to the needy up till now. There is also a package for the LDCs which is mandatory in all ministerial to serve the poorest of the globe who have been hit particularly hard by the policy of economic deregulation and free and unfair trade the so-called Washington Consensus wrought since the 1990s.
India is vulnerable on the latter as the National Food Security Act recently passed by Parliament entails huge subsidy outgo on this count. That is the reason why Mr. Sharma has made all noises that India would remain obdurate on the core agenda of food security before his departure.
Later addressing a meeting of the G-33 in Bali he maintained that “it is difficult for us to accept an interim solution as it has been currently designed” meaning that the four-year reprieve before the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) kicked in by way of peace clause is also not an acceptable measure till a lasting solution is found to this fundamental concern of food security.
Just as the Cancun ministerial in 2003 failed on the issue of drastically cutting down the rich countries’ farm subsidies, the issue of food security raised by India and other like-minded nations—not many—might play spoilsport.
That is the reason why Chair and Vice Chairs of the Bali Ministerial in their statement in Geneva last month expressed concerns that they do not have agreement on the negotiating texts needed to succeed in Bali. The jury will be out in a couple of days as to how far the trade ministers and envoys buried their differences to come on board by evincing flexibility and willingness to work in concert to score a substantive deal. But this is too much asking for the politicians as they prefer business as usual to evolving any consensus for the Doha Round to succeed belatedly.
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