Business | Economy
India, WTO want to revive trade talks
The head of the World Trade Organisation and India's commerce minister called yesterday for the resumption of global trade talks that stalled last month in Geneva.
- AP
- Published: 20:39 August 12, 2008
- Image Credit: AP
- Pascal Lamy and Kamal Nath. The WTO chief said that if the trade talks had been successful, the sum of global import tariffs would have been slashed by half.
New Delhi: The head of the World Trade Organisation and India's commerce minister called yesterday for the resumption of global trade talks that stalled last month in Geneva.
"India is committed to the multilateral system, but when we resume, I urge you to come to the table looking not for what you can get, but what you can give," said Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, singling out foreign diplomats who had gathered to hear him speak at a trade conference in New Delhi.
Representatives from the US, Britain, Canada, Brazil, Belgium, Japan, and Uru-guay, among other nations, were on hand.
WTO Director General Pascal Lamy said that after trade talks stalled July 29, WTO member states had urged him to push ahead. "Don't throw in the towel. Please reserve what's on the table. We have never been so close," they said, he recalled.
"Two days after a failure such unanimous view was and remains surprising," he added.
Lamy and Nath were speaking at a trade conference organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, or Ficci, a business group, and the Consumer Unity & Trust Society International, or Cuts, a non-governmental consumer advocacy group.
They did not lay out any time frame for kick-starting the so-called Doha round, which began in 2001 with the goal of helping emerging economies benefit from freer trade.
Talks foundered last month because India and China failed to reach an accord with the US on emergency agricultural tariffs, which would protect developing markets from sudden surges of imported farm products.
Lamy said that if the talks had been successful, the sum of global import tariffs would have been slashed by half, a savings of $150 billion a year. Developing countries would have contributed one-third of that savings and reaped two-thirds of the rewards, he said.
The US would have been required to cap trade-distorting subsidies, which could surge to $48 billion a year, at $14.5 billion a year, he said.
US Trade Representative Susan Schwab will also meet with Lamy, her spokeswoman Gretchen Hamel said by e-mail from Washington.
"The US remains committed to a successful Doha Round; however, we continue to have deep concerns with proposals under consideration that would not only limit market opening by the world's fastest growing economies, but would actually raise new barriers to trade - particularly against other developing countries," Hamel wrote.
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