New Delhi: India on Sunday made it clear that a few nations cannot move ahead with WTO trade pact without resolving the crucial food security issue and the matter needs consensus.
WTO Director General Roberto Azevedo recently said some some members were seeking implementation of the trade facilitation agreement (TFA) as a plurilateral pact as part of the three alternatives to end the impasse over food security.
"Decisions are to be taken on a consensus basis. You are not going to isolate any one decision or any one country and say Oh my God, you are not agreeing, forget it you can be where you are, we are moving ahead, (it ) cannot happen.
"Nothing is agreed till everything is agreed is a principle which drives the WTO. How could you then isolate trade facilitation...All of us want to have trade facilitation. How could you just prioritise that," Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said here.
India is not "obstructionist" and is only asking the WTO to follow the principle that 'nothing is agreed till everything is agreed', she said at India Global Forum.
India had made it clear that it would not ratify the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), a pact that eases global custom norms, until a permanent solution was found on the food subsidy issue.
Sitharaman said since the Uruguay Round of WTO, subsidies to farmers given by the US and the EU were never came on the table for discussion.
"...Some subsidies are being given and they are never called subsidies and never brought on the table," she said, adding that "there was a distortion and an imperfection in the Bali agreement and that imperfection hurts our duty as a government which has to take care of its people".
The minister said that India did not want to re-negotiate the whole thing again, but the WTO should understand the case which New Delhi is presenting.
"We are with you on the TFA, we want to go ahead on that, but be sure that you understand the case which we are bringing in because otherwise we have western economies also come back and lecture us on 'Oh starving millions in India and government does not take care of them'. No, we want no such lectures, we will take care of starving Indians.
"But therefore please extend the peace clause and find us a permanent solution. Do not make us wait till 2017. These are legitimate demands," she added.
India had asked WTO to amend the norms for calculating agri subsidies so that the country could continue to procure foodgrains from farmers at minimum support price and sell them to poor at cheaper rates without violating the WTO norms.
The current WTO norms limit the value of food subsidies at 10 percent of the total value of foodgrain production. However, the quantum of subsidy is computed after taking into consideration prices that prevailed two decades ago.
There are apprehensions that once India would fully implement its food security programme it may breach the cap.
Under the peace clause, a WTO member gets immunity against penalty for breaching the food subsidy cap. As per the WTO norms, a developing nation can provide food subsidy of up to 10 percent of the total farm output.
The food subsidy provided by India for paddy during 2010-11 worked out to be only around 6 percent of the total output of the commodity in value terms. In case of wheat, the subsidy is negative by 1 percent.
A senior official from the Commerce Ministry is in Geneva for talks with developed countries like the US.
Sitharaman expressed hope that a solution to the issue would be found "because multi-lateralism will have to remain sustained and remain empowered".
She said several other WTO member countries too want solution to the food stockpiling issue but because of some "compulsions" they are not speaking out.
"Taking care of us (India's issue) in the next four years is too long a period. Extend the peace clause, let it coexist until such a time that you do not get us a permanent solution," she said.
The minister said a member-country cannot drag India every time into WTO's dispute settlement mechanism in case of breach of the 10 percent subsidy cap as the method to calculate the cap is based on 1986-87 base year.
"Is that right. Would you agree that. Any sensible economist would think that something is wrong here. You can't be sitting on a base year which is 30-year-old. How do you factor in inflation, how do you factor in global production of grains and different ways in which trade is happening now," she asked.
She said that Indian government procures foodgrains from poor farmers.
"These are arguments not to weaken the WTO, these are arguments to remind the WTO that go on your state of principle's that you will not agree on any one thing till you agree on every thing but in Bali we forgot that principle," she said.
She said India believes in multi-lateral trade framework but asked for greater representation of developing and emerging economies in different multi-lateral bodies and fora.
On a question on SAARC, she said the new government is taking every effort since the swearing in ceremony of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to reach out to neighbouring countries and become an equal partner in SAARC and dispel any notion about India being a big brother.
